


Sometimes a mole hill is actually a mountain.

by Celticas



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Child Abuse, Clint's childhood wasn't actually bad, Graphic Violence, Half a Coffee shop AU, M/M, Marvel Big Bang 2019, Suggestion of Consenual Underage Sex, but Phil's was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-14 03:17:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 15
Words: 63,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21008843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celticas/pseuds/Celticas
Summary: Neither of their lives went the way they were expecting. Clint thought he would live and die in the Circus and Phil dreamed of joining the Army.A surprise child, and financial problems set them both on a path they hadn't seen coming.Clint has just joined SHIELD as a disgraced Marine, and Phil is running a successful little bakery. Not life paths you would expect to interact that much.





	1. Nov 2013, New York

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank the amazing [Nantai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nantai). She edited this work at the last minute and did an amazing job! Thank you for your support and being a sounding board when I wasn't sure if something worked or not.

Phil Coulson stood in the window of his little bakery. He watched as a group of people, ranging from young twenties to late forties, laughed and jostled each other, hauling boxes into the building across the way. Four men and a woman were darting in and out of a small U-Haul. As they moved around each other, boxes and bits of furniture disappeared into the apartment building across the road. One of the men caught his eye in particular. Blond hair, starting to grow out of a military buzz-cut that created a golden halo above a square jaw and shining blue eyes that sparkled with laughter at one of his friends.

Phil cradled a warm, slightly lopsided ceramic mug of fresh coffee carefully against his chest. In another life, he might have been one of those friends. Care-free. Laughing on a frigid morning as he helped a school friend or work colleague move, for the promise of pizza and beer. He didn’t remember the last time he had been that open with someone else. When had he last laughed with someone who wasn’t an employee or customer? Did he even have any friends left? At school he hung out with a small group of people that never expected to stay in contact after graduation. That expectation had been fulfilled, they had all moved away, but then again he had been the one to move first. Different life choices and so many of them not knowing what to say had chipped away until they were all swept away by the tide of time.

With a sigh, he turned away. He was no worry-free twenty-something. He was a twenty-something that had a bakery/cafe to open and run. He was a twenty-something pushed into adulthood in his teens because of his own stupid choices. He was a twenty-something that had muffins due out of the oven any second. 

Cream cheese filled pumpkin muffins today. With only four weeks until Thanksgiving, he was starting to tailor the recipes a little for the holiday. And Skye had demanded cream cheese and he folded like a wet paper bag. It hadn’t been his finest moment. It would also, absolutely, happen again. Skye’s puppy dog eyes would always overcome his objections.

He was a sucker when it came to his baby girl. But they were all each of them had.

After pulling the steaming confections out of the industrial ovens and replacing them with a tray of scones and re-setting the timer that he almost never needed, he bustled back out into the front of the cafe. He walked the well-worn wood floors, taking a couple of chairs off tables that had been put up the night before, straightened a stray armchair next to the wide windows, and organised the community bookshelves that he had added in the corner when he took over. It was the quietest the little shop ever got and he stopped to take a deep breath of the smell of yeast and coffee. Pulling the peace into his soul.

He was prepared for another busy day. He knew the cafes in Manhattan were worse, but there was always a steady stream of business through his little bakery, with spikes of people sweeping in and out on their way to or from work. They were also close enough to the Brooklyn campus of the City University of New York to have students coming in at all times of the day, from their early 6 am open until they were having to kick them out at 10 pm.

With his perpetually accurate internal clock telling him the scones needed to come out of the oven, he put the last chair under the last table, flicked the lights on in the shop and was opening the oven as the little timer began it’s annoying song and dance. Jumping each time it beeped, trying to make a dash for freedom. He put the trays of perfectly golden scones down and grabbed the timer up just as it tipped over the edge of the shelf it lived on.

Phil carefully placed it back where it belonged. He may never need its annoying ringing, but it had been Paul’s and he wouldn’t dream of getting rid of it. It was as much a part of this place as the shabby but comfortable furniture out front and the ever-changing menu. With his hands still wrapped in tea towels, he tipped the scones onto a display plate and took them with him, the steam misting the air in front of his face, to join the muffins and loaves of bread he had finished earlier in the morning. His first customer was waiting at the still locked door.

John came in every morning, Monday to Friday, always there early enough to have to wait for someone to let him in. He got whatever muffin Phil chose for him and a long black before hurrying out the door to make his train. He had been doing it for as long as Phil had worked there. Phil strode over to let him in.

Another day was started.

Linda, the morning barista, bustled in half an hour after he had opened. He glanced out the window as she shooed him upstairs, the U-Haul truck and its cadre of people were gone. A weird pang shot through his heart. Having little glimpses into the normal lives of his contemporaries was always hard. Reminded him of what he would have had in another life. Right now, he needed to pull his head back into _ this _ life. Skye needed to get up and start her day. And he would never swap her for carefree days with friends he probably wouldn’t be talking to by the time he hit thirty.

“Anything to note boss?” Linda’s voice was heavy with her native Brooklyn accent. She had grown up only two blocks from the shop and never left the area. A sick little sister and an absent father had her well and truly tied to the borough.

“I’ll pull the sourdough out before heading up, muffins are Pumpkin Cream Cheese and plain scones.” He rattled off as she quickly tied her apron over her jeans and sweater.

“Gotcha!”

Leaving the growing line to the almost not a teenager, as she liked to remind him, he hustled upstairs. There was a little girl that needed to be up and out the door by 7.30 or she would be late for school. It was only two and a bit blocks, but Skye managed to get distracted by everything. Talking a mile a minute, barely pausing to allow him to answer a question, it took twice as long to get to the school than it should. He loved their walk to and from school.

Back upstairs he went, into the larger of the two apartments above the cafe. When they had first come to New York, he and Skye lived in the little one-bedroom across the hallway. Sharing the bedroom and then as she had gotten older, he had sectioned off a bit of the main room and left the proper bedroom to her. A year ago, when Paul retired upstate, they had swapped apartments with Paul’s niece, Tasha, who stayed with him and who was hardly around. She moved into the studio and gave Phil and Skye a chance to have their own rooms. The red-head who was around Phil’s age, was doing her post-grad studies and seemed to spend most of her time out doing data collection for her research, or holed up in the library or her apartment. Sometimes they went months without seeing her.

The main room was silent and burnished in the early morning sun when he pushed open the slightly sticky door. Sometimes Skye was up before he returned from his early morning baking, sometimes she wasn’t. Either way, the easiest part of the morning was getting the eight-year-old out of bed. She was bouncing with energy the moment he woke her. Long, dark hair a tangled mess down her back as she danced around the room telling him all about her dreams, spinning into the bathroom and then back out. That day it was about being a superhero with earthquake powers. He listened with half an ear, even as he pulled her uniform out of the cupboard and wrangled her flying limbs into the khaki shirt and pants.

He prodded her in the direction of the kitchen as she continued to chatter away in a mix of English, Russian, Spanish, and Mandarin. The Asian language was much more halting and hesitant amongst the English, Russian or Spanish. She had learned Russian right alongside English, Paul and Tasha using it almost exclusively outside of the Cafe and the early exposure had it seeping in. She had only started learning Mandarin six months ago but had been taking Spanish at school for two years and now used it in place of English with Juan and Noa in the cafe. He had learned Russian right along with her and picked up bits of each of the others listening to her chatter every day.

The first halt in the stream of consciousness was as she munched on her toast. The long-fought battle to mind her manners and not speak with her mouth full was sadly on-going. With her sitting still at the kitchen counter, he took the chance to sweep a brush through her hair and quickly braid it back, a skill he never thought he would ever need. It tied into a long rope that reached the waistband of her uniform.

With her hair neatened, he made a note to get her a haircut soon. Maybe this weekend if there was time. Her bangs were falling into her eyes. She kept shaking her head to get them out of her face.

“Daddy, can I cut my hair?” It was scary how in sync they sometimes were. Spending so much of their time together and both of them being particular about their clothes, made some things as a single father easier. She always told him when her clothes or hair needed attention.

He laughed at the coincidence. “Sure, sweetheart. I should have time to get it trimmed this weekend.”

Her head shake was hard and fast. “No. Not trim. Can I get it _ cut _?” The eyes she sent in his direction were large and liquid. Pleading. It was undeniably unfair.

“You’ve always loved your long hair.” Last time the hairdresser had suggested taking a couple of inches more than absolutely needed off the length. There had been tears. So many, many tears.

“It gets caught in the swings and in the way.” She pouted up at him.

He had to chuckle at the poorly executed sad face. If she wanted it cut, they would get it cut. “Sure. But no complaining after. If we get it cut it will take time to grow back so be sure you want it gone. Maybe think about just getting a bit off and see how you go?”

She looked down at the crumbs that were all that was left of her breakfast.

“Ok.” She smiled up at him, before hopping off her chair.

Their little discussion had derailed their normal morning routine, as normal as they ever had. She found something to be distracted by most days. He grabbed her little purple backpack off the coffee table where she had left it the night before. A hand on her back kept her moving. 

They waved to the busy Linda as they exited through the cafe, Phil pausing quickly to snag the packaged muffin he had put aside for Skye’s morning snack. They passed Ella on their way out the door. The university student was there to help Linda with the quickly increasing crowd waiting to be served. She would work a few hours before going to class.

They were halfway down the block, Skye pointing out three dogs, a couple of birds and a lone alley cat, when Phil, distracted by stopping Skye from _ chasing the feral cat _, bumped shoulders with someone. It was hard enough to jar him out of his thoughts and hurt.

“Oh! Sorry!” The voice of the man he had walked into, was light and rounded by a Midwest accent. 

“No, it was…” He looked up into the sparkling sapphire eyes of his newest neighbor, or friend of his newest neighbor. “Um, It was my fault. I, um wasn’t watching where I was going.” How was the man even more beautiful close-up? 

A happy, slightly cheeky grin spread across the blonde man’s face. “In that case, no problem!”

“Um.” He was in so much trouble if this man had just moved in across the street, he would forever be peeking out the window to catch a glimpse.

“DAD!” Skye tugged on his hand. Hard. It pulled him back to the present, to realise that he had been staring. “I’m gonna be late!” Yes, _ now _ she was concerned about being tardy. She could delay them as much as she wanted, but when it was him the world was going to end if she arrived even a second after the bell had rung.

“Right, sorry Skye. Let’s go.” The smile he threw at the other man was half apology and half bashful.

As they hurried away, he had to shake his head at himself. What the hell had all of that been about?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/218785/cream-cheese-filled-pumpkin-muffins/


	2. Oct 2004, South Carolina

The tiles were ice cold through the seat of Phil’s school uniform slacks. He had been sitting on the bathroom floor for a while and a detached part of his brain told him that the tiles should have warmed up by now, but they hadn’t. Idly, he wondered if the tiles under Ann had warmed up. 

He didn’t ask. 

He remained silent under the uneasy tension that sat heavy around their shoulders, a cloak of impending change. They had been best friends for over ten years. Meeting when her family moved to town and instantly recognising the outcast in each other. He had never hesitated to say whatever was on his mind to her. She knew every random thought, every daydream, every hope for the future. Waiting for a little plastic stick to tell them if they had thrown away those futures to meet the expectations and avoid the prejudices of their families, that easy camaraderie had been stolen. 

God, it had been so stupid. What had they been thinking? It had started years ago. It had started a few weeks ago. 

There had been whispers for years. Since they had entered high school. His disinterest in dating, her slightly too long glances at the cheerleaders instead of the football players had caught people’s attention. That notice had grown into whispers, which had grown into rumors. Rumors designed to hurt. Rumors fed by an intolerant community and teenagers wanting to hurt the people they didn’t understand. At a conservative Catholic school in South Carolina, the rumors were enough to have teachers beginning to treat them differently. Ignoring them when they tried to answer a question in class, grades slipping when their work hadn’t, pairing them with the worst of the rumormongers instead of one of their small group of friends.

It had gotten so much worse six weeks ago though. It had been a fundraising event for the school. Phil’s dad had had one of his rare sober moments of attempted parenting and actually turned up. He had been avoiding actually talking to anyone, for some reason he thought turning up was good enough and that he didn’t  _ actually _ have to do anything, standing on his own in a corner, half-hidden by a large poster board. From his hiding place, he had overheard a couple of the football players gossiping. Saying that Phil had been staring at one of them during practice.

George Coulson had gotten home blind drunk and in a towering rage. Phil unconsciously shivered just thinking about that night.

Phil could smell the whiskey seeping from his father’s pores the second the front door banged open. His father being stumbling, stupid drunk was nothing new, it happened on a weekly basis, at least, but something was different this time. Normally, he staggered in sometime between when Phil shut himself in his room for the night, and midnight. He usually could follow the older man’s movements through the house by his stumbling and cursing, knocking into furniture and walls. Spitting expletives and threats at everyone George Coulson thought had ever done him wrong, starting with his own parents, working through every boss he had ever had and ending with Phil’s disappeared mother and Phil himself. On bad nights he came into Phil’s room and roughed him up a little before falling into a drunken stupor, but most nights he just slumped into an armchair and began snoring loud enough to shake the foundations of the old family homestead that looked more run-down every month no matter what Phil did to try and keep up with the maintenance.

On that unseasonably warm autumn night however, the sun had barely set, and Phil had still been in the kitchen working on homework, he couldn’t remember what. It might have been a book report, or maybe Calculus. In the end, whatever it had been, he had never handed it in. He hadn’t handed anything in for a week after that, avoiding school and the few friends he had until his face had healed enough for people not to ask questions.

“Is it true?” His dad roars, somehow slurring around the hard angry edges of the words. Only long experience in deciphering his dad’s drunken ramblings allowed Phil to parse what his dad had shouted.

Phil had been up and behind the heavy kitchen table before the front door had slammed shut, putting furniture that wasn’t easily tossed aside between them. At his first look at his dad’s face, he wished he had taken Ann up on going to the library after school. His face was flushed red from the alcohol and veins throbbed with heavy, dark emotion in his neck.

He had only seen his father like this once before. The night Mom had left. 

George walked into the heavy wooden kitchen table that was older than Phil’s grandparents as he tried to get at Phil. Pushing off it, he stumbled into a wall before he was on Phil. A heavy fist connected with Phil’s right cheekbone and eye, pain blooming under the warm, wet rush of blood from split skin.

“Is what true?” 

Both hands were wrapped in Phil’s shirt. One was perfectly clean, the other was stained red with blood across the knuckles.

“You’re a fag?” The pulsing anger transformed into sneering disgust.

“N..no.” Phil stuttered. Barely able to get the word out. “No.” He tried again with more success. “Me and Ann.” He knew in his father’s eyes Ann not being white made her only the tiniest sliver better than him liking boys, but it was the only lie that had any chance of being believed. He waved a hand around vaguely, letting his dad draw his own conclusion.

He was going to owe her so much, just for bringing her into this. Ten months and they would both be out of here and it hopefully wouldn’t matter. Hopefully, it would be something they could laugh about when meeting for drinks in ten years after he got back from one warzone or another and she was between shifts as a surgeon.

The Phil sitting in that cold, not as sterile as it should be, institutional bathroom mentally scoffed at the remembered thought, ‘wouldn’t matter’. It could be the only thing that fucking mattered in 30 seconds.

The falsely declared relationship had his father’s face transforming again. From a disgusted, hateful sneer, to distrustful contemplation. The fog of whiskey and whispers that would never really leave now they were wound into the man’s psyche, fighting against Phil’s words.

George pushed Phil away, sending the slighter form of his son staggering into the wall. “Fine.” He ground out, before turning a wobbly 180. He was gone as soon as he had appeared. Back out into the newly darkened night.

If only he had left it there.

Over lunch the first day back after the bruise had finally faded, he had told Ann all about it, leaving out the bruised eye and cut cheek. Thinking they would laugh it off together, just another story of the small-town mindset of his family he had told her. She hadn’t. She had listened carefully. Silently. In the end, she had only said one word, ‘Okay’ and then leaned in close, giving the impression of a closer and different relationship than they had ever had.

The rumors quietened.

Maybe it could have stopped there.

Two weeks later they had gone on a two-day swim meet to Charleston with their school. They were both on the team and looked forward to the chance to get out of Kingston for a little. The first day had gone well, they had both placed, Ann second in the 100 m butterfly, and Phil third in the 100 m freestyle. A celebration, i.e. chance to make out with someone you didn’t see every day, started up that night with students from multiple schools turning up.

Phil didn’t know who brought the cheap booze but the punch was spiked so that it was more vodka than fruit juice. 

Ann had spent a fun hour flirting with a pretty Latina from Milford, which was on the other end of the state from Kingston until one of the two popular girls who were also on the team started in with the same old bullshit. Phil was standing next to the spiked punch bowl when they did.

He thought all of this had been finished.

Tessa slanted a slit-eyed look at him. They knew he could hear them. So, they weren’t just digging at Ann, they were digging at him a well. As nonchalantly as he could, he wandered in the vague direction of where Ann was standing on the other side of the pool.

“Hey.” He quietly interrupted the two girls, sliding an arm around Ann’s shoulders awkwardly.

The look she threw him was questioning but half a head tilt in the direction of Tessa and Emily had her leaning into his side with a painfully fake smile, taking the hand he had slung around her in one of her own. The girl she had been flirting with watched the interaction with a drawn look on her face. Then she followed his little head movement to see the girls on the other side of the courtyard with their bottle-blonde hair and overdone nails. Her face cleared in understanding.

The three of them spent an awkward hour or so chatting. All of them studiously ignoring the eyes that flicked over them and quickly away from the rest of the team from St James the Greater, their school mates.

They also got steadily drunker. Their cups never seemed to be empty. The more they drank, the gigglier the two girls got and Phil wasn’t sure whether he was talking to two or four other people. 

“You and Ann are gonna have some fun tonight huh? She’s all over you man.” Peter Thompson thumped him on the shoulder as Phil was once again filling the red plastic cups with the potent punch.

Phil didn’t remember what he said in response or what really happened next. He had pieced it together from the stories that had raged across the school and his own and Ann’s blurry recollections.

He had said something back to Peter that by all accounts was the douchiest thing he had ever, or would ever say. From there he had stumbled his way back to the girls and somehow Ann and he had ended up in her hotel room. Neither of them knew quite how. 

Ann remembered once the door had been closed, Phil had folded in half on the end of her bed. Eventually, with sad eyes, he had looked up at her and asked if everything they were saying was right. If they just needed to try it, realise what they were missing. In her own drunken state, she hadn’t really argued the question. She had her own doubts. Years later he would realise it was fear more than doubt he had seen in her eyes. There were only so many times you could be told something before you started questioning it, even more so whenever inhibition and any shred of sense you ever had, had been burnt away by cheap alcohol.

It had been bad. God, it had been horrible for both of them. Fumbling, and awkward, and awful. That he did remember. By anyone else's standards, it was over too soon, by their own it went on for much too long.

Phil was woken by a loud banging on his hotel room door. With a groan he levered himself upright, hungover and nauseous, he stumbled to the door. Wrenching it open, he was almost rapped on the nose.

“Get to the bus. You’re late!” Charlie grumbled before storming onto the next room. The teaching assistant had been stuck babysitting them, as he saw it because he was the newest member of staff, and let all of them know he resented it.

He wanted to fall back into bed, but a glance at the alarm clock told him that as annoying as Charlie was, he was right, Phil was very late. He did steal a bit more time to splash his face with cold water and brush the taste of stale alcohol from his mouth. Eventually, he joined the shuffling, mostly asleep, and very hungover line of students.

If luck had been on their side, that would have been the end of it.

It wasn’t.

The mostly blank memories of that night had gotten shuffled into the back of his mind. Ann never mentioned it, and they did their best to forget it even happened. A week and a half after getting back to Kingston, Tessa had been caught in the locker room with her boyfriend’s college-age brother, and Phil Coulson disappearing into Ann Bai’s hotel room was forgotten by everyone else as well.

The one bright spot was that it had stayed as the center of the school’s gossip just long enough to get back to his dad, who had clapped him on the shoulder and left him alone since. 

He had thought everything was fine.

Ann wasn’t so happy. She had been fine for a few weeks after. Then she was biting his, and everyone else’s heads off. She cried in chemistry and then threw up in gym. When she fell asleep in English he finally pulled her aside. That had been last week.

Huddled in the corner of the library, their sanctuary, she had burst into tears again. Large gasping sobs as she struggled to catch her breath. Sitting against the Spanish novels that nobody ever borrowed, she collapsed into his side. Her face buried in his scratchy uniform jacket, she cried. With an arm around her shoulder, he tucked her in close and held her until she had cried herself out.

She cried for a long time. He would always remember the feeling of abject hopelessness that settled low in his gut as he sat in that dusty library on an October Afternoon. Whatever had Ann so devastated was going to shake the foundations of everything.

Eventually, she hiccuped her way back to awareness. Tears slowly drying.

“What happened?” He whispered to her. As long as they were quiet they would be able to hide from the world in their little corner.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

He could hardly hear what she said, but the words shuddered to a halt in a suddenly empty space where his thoughts and future used to be.

“Are you sure?” Just saying the words made him cringe but he had to ask. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was something else. 

“I, um. I got a test. But I haven’t been able to take it yet.” She whispered. Her eyes swam with tears.

His stomach lurched sickeningly. “Ok. Um. You have to…” What did he even say?

“I know. Will you wait with me?”

“Of course!” He was a little offended at how unsure she sounded. Had their friendship been damaged that much that she would question whether he would help her? Would stand by her?

They agreed to meet after their extracurriculars the next day. Saturday mornings, the school campus was teaming with sports teams, and computer club, and the student newspaper, and half a dozen other teams and clubs. By 1 pm the sprawling complex was mostly deserted, a few teachers still holed up in their classrooms, and grounds staff putting right the damage that the students had done to the gardens over the week.

That’s how the two honors students found themselves sitting on the cold tile floor of the second-floor girls bathroom staring at a plastic stick, waiting for their lives to maybe change forever.

Phil’s watch beeped the three minutes the box had said to wait. He couldn’t look. Instead, he scrunched his eyes up and just concentrate on breathing. Taking a few more seconds to see the future that he didn’t need to look at a little stick to tell him it was gone.


	3. Nov 2013, New York

The accelerated class of SHIELD Junior Operations Agents finished training in upstate New York in early November. There were only three of them in the class. Clinton Francis Barton, ex-Marine sniper, Barbara “Bobbie” Morse, PhD in Comparative Biology and Genetics, and Melinda May, classified with a threatening scowl. The three of them got on ok but were never going to be bosom buddies. The hurt Clint was still feeling from his abrupt exit from the Marines had him leery of getting invested in new people, May was naturally silent as the fucking void, and Bobbie was mixing her training with some research project that had gone way over Clint’s head the one time he had asked and didn’t have time to socialise. The arrangement suited all three of them perfectly.

A week before their ‘Marching Out Parade’, they had each received an envelope. On Monday, Bobbie was handed hers over lunch by the Military History Trainer. From lurking in the vents, Clint knew Melinda had found hers slipped under her door Wednesday morning. His packet had been slipped into his locker in the change room next to the gym. 

It had contained their paperwork and assignment instructions. Where their first posting was, and when they were expected to turn up. Whether they would have, could ask for, or not to bother asking for on-base accommodations. Who their Supervising Officer was. What their job was.

All of it was pretty familiar to Clint, with the exception of the delivery mechanism. He had been picked up by the Agency after an honorable discharge from the Marines, where he had spent the last five years getting similar packets. It actually contained  _ more _ information than a lot of the highly redacted or just almost empty packets the Marines had sometimes given him. He had half thought SHIELD would black bag each of them in their last few days of training and spirit them each away from the Academy to their respective posts, never to hear from each other again and all of them living in fear of what had become of the others.

He had found his packet when he went to put his bow and quiver away at three in the morning. He had retreated to the range after tossing in his bunk for hours. It hadn’t been there when he arrived. 

Tucking it under his arm he kept his equipment on him, he wasn’t going to risk the beautiful longbow that he had managed to hold onto during his service years, being stolen from what had proved, even with his own improvements, to be an insecure location. It was the only thing he had held onto from his childhood.

He didn’t look at the yellow envelope until he was wedged in the narrow vents above his two by three-meter room. The door to the room was locked, a chair jammed under the handle and the air vent screwed in and covered behind him, he would hear anyone coming a mile away. Others had been given and read theirs in the open. Clint didn’t trust that. He didn’t trust the other agents. Not after everything that had happened with his unit. The two women he had been training with were ok, and if they were posted to the same base he might start the overtures of friendship with them. But the trainers and other, less experienced trainees that they had frog-jumped over, were another story. 

For six weeks, he had heard the whispers. The story of his exit from the Marines had made the rounds on week two. He strongly suspected an ex-Navy guy of letting that cat out of the bag. He had shown the guy up in the first week on the range. The judgemental looks and careful avoidance had been noted. He knew what they thought of him. Of his background. The lack of education. He knew they called him back-country hick. Circus freak. Traitor.

Turning the thick paper packet in his hands in the small space, he examined the outside before opening it. The only distinguishing mark was his name in blocky capitals across the front, the letters so uniform they could have been printed rather than handwritten except for the minuscule difference in pressure across the words. Easing the flap open and sliding the sheaf of papers out he set the envelope aside.

The first page was the normal administrative bullshit, Dear Mr. Barton, Congratulations blah blah blah. He skim read it and then tucked it back in the packet. Who knows if he would need it again. He speed-read the rest of the pile. Bits of information jumping out at him. 

Supervising Officer: Senior Agent Nicholas Joseph Fury.

Assigned Base: New York Headquarters.

Posting Start Date: November 6th 2013.

Position: Classified.

The bullshit was starting early. He did note that he would have to live off-base and HR could provide a list of approved safe-houses across the five boroughs. He wouldn’t be taking them up on it thank you very much. He read the pages a second and a third time, committing information to memory. Wiggling his way out of the vent, he glided silently through the still, pre-dawn halls. The common room at the end of the barracks had a small fireplace. Perfect for incinerating paperwork that he didn’t feel the need to share with anyone.

The last few days of training passed quickly. Neither of the women asked if he had received his orders, knowing he wouldn’t answer or would just outright lie. The Marching Out Parade, which with only three graduates was more a handshake and thanks for coming, see you later, than an actual parade, was scheduled for Friday morning. 

It wasn’t mandatory, so Clint took the head start. He finished packing up the few things in his room during the lunch break on Thursday. He showed up for dinner that night, was as quiet as he normally was and followed his usual routine of slipping away straight after the meal. Some nights he had gone to the range and lost himself in the stretch and release of his bow. On others, he had tucked himself in the back of the little library until far into the night and worked his way through the assigned work. Nights where nightmares stalked his dreams he shimmied into the vents and curled up away from the small bits of the world that could still find him in this hidden part of the universe.

Thursday night, he did none of those things. His bow was packed, there was no more homework, and his nightmares were pushed down under a mission. With a pattern of behavior established that wouldn’t have anyone looking for him until morning at the earliest, Clint collected his bags and vanished into the cool night.

The drive to New York was peaceful. Cloudless, the stars stretched endlessly across the sky. For hours he drove along back roads, hardly passing another car. The radio played a secondhand Dizzy Gillespie cd. It was the same track that Carson’s Fortune Teller, Theodosia, used to play as they had caravaned down endless, corn bordered highways. 

It reminded him of family and freedom. Of a time before the slow death of his childhood.

It was still dark when he hit the edge of the city. Long stretchers of cool blue stars giving way to the warm, artificial lights of street lamps, and homes of people. He skirted the edges of the mass of humanity, moving through the Bronx until he could swing onto Long Island. At just after 2 am, he pulled his old, faded purple pickup into the driveway of a dark, single-story clapboard house in Hicksville.

The extra key was exactly where Theodosia had told him it would be, hidden under the little ceramic rabbit that sat beside the back door. On silent feet he moved through the house, his extraordinary sight allowing him to leave the lights off. Nothing to disturb the sleeping family inside. A couch was made up with blankets and a pillow. Dropping his bag at its end, he face-planted onto the soft cushions and was asleep in seconds.

He slept for hours. The first time in longer than he could remember that he slept solidly. His body and mind quiet in the safety of family. 

= + = 

The quiet murmuring of little kid voices woke him up. The foreheads and eyes of a little boy and girl peeked over the back of the other couch. When they saw he was awake, they dropped out of sight with a giggle. The murmuring picked up in volume. Each of them trying to cajole the other into checking on him.

“Kids.” Theodosia’s husband, Rick, hissed from somewhere behind Clint’s head. “Get away from there.”

The murmuring stopped.

Clint raised a hand and waved in the direction of the voice. “It’s fine. I’m awake anyway.” His voice was husky with sleep.

“Oh. Still, their mom wants them.” Rick spoke at a normal volume this time. The creak of a floorboard signaled his proper entry into the room.

Clint sat up, piles of blankets pooling around his waist. Turning slightly, he got his first proper look at Rick since the wedding. His dark hair had more salt than Clint remembered, and was sitting just a little further up his forehead. Otherwise, he looked exactly as Clint remembered him. A burly contractor, he was a good head taller than the short archer.

The rapid pattern of children’s feet on hardwood floors followed the kids out of the room. Clint and Rick’s smiles followed them.

“I’m off to work. Theo is in the kitchen when you are ready to get up.” Without the constraint of a sleeping guest, the large man’s exit was almost thunderous. Bellowing a goodbye, and stamping into his work boots in the short hallway next to the lounge room. The door slammed behind him.

Clint stayed half wrapped in sleep warm textiles for another few seconds. Cuddling the warn quilt and fraying flannel sheets to his chest, he felt like he was 17 again, surrounded by the sounds and smells of his adopted family.

The smell of fresh coffee drew him from his nest. Swooping down, he grabbed up an old Marine sweatshirt and shrugged into it as he wandered in the direction the sounds of life were coming from. Theo was bustling around the kitchen, her long auburn hair hung loose down her back, waves and curls showing where she had had it tied back for the night. The children, Benjamin and Ella, Clint suddenly remembered, were sat at the table, bowls of porridge steaming in front of each of them. 

His entrance was ignored by the little people, more interested in their breakfast now that it was in front of them. Theo flicked her eyes at his hair, smirked, and turned away to pour him a cup of coffee. He remembered that smirk. Without much belief that it would help, he ran his fingers through his hair, trying to get it in some semblance of order. Half of it had been flattened to his skull where it had been pressed into the couch and the other half was standing on end with static from pulling the shirt on. Even with little more than a buzzcut, it was a battle he was going to lose without water and copious amounts of gel.

The mug of coffee was accompanied by a kiss on the cheek. “Let me get the rascals off to school and then we can catch up.”

He nodded and stepped out of the way. Let the family get their day started without him interrupting their schedule further. He drained his coffee quickly and then went looking for the shower. Finding it through the first door he tried, a change of clothes from his bag was all he needed before he attempted to drown himself in what seemed like endless streams of scalding water.

Warmed to his core and dressed in time softened jeans and a tee-shirt with stretched out neck and armholes, he left the steamy bathroom. The house was still around him. Theo out, walking the kids the block to their school. With the building to himself, the urge to snoop took over. The bathroom was the first door on the left in a hallway that ran off one side of the lounge room. The next was the master bedroom, the wood floors giving way to creamy carpets and the white walls of the public area changing into a warm eggshell blue. The right side of the hallway also had two doors. Each one opening into one of the kid’s bedrooms.

He had just eased the door on Benjamin’s room closed when the front door opened. A sudden draft blew through the house. Theo was back. They stepped into the lounge room at the same time.

“Come let me look at you.” She pulled him in close for a tight hug and then pushed him away again. It had been three years since they had seen each other in person, he had had a stopover in New York on his way out of the country for his second deployment and she had been able to meet him for coffee at the airport, Ella just learning to walk in the chair between them watching all of the people. “You’ve lost weight,” she tutted. 

With a hand still wrapped around his forearm, she dragged him into the kitchen. Releasing him as she began putting together his breakfast, steadfastly ignoring his loud insistence that he could make it.

“Jeremy and Sarah are living in Yonkers. We see them every month or so” she chattered as she worked. He let the exact words fade out and just basked in the feeling of being with someone loved.

The day was spent moving between rooms, and having food placed in his hand or at his elbow every time he came too close. The rhythm of exchanging information and updating each other something they were both familiar with. When Carson’s had finished its final show, the company had scattered to the four winds. All of them did their best to stay in contact, but oftentimes long stretches went between seeing each other and the dance started afresh. The only interruption was when they wandered down the street and back again to get the kids.

Rick got home just as the sun was kissing the horizon. His loaded down pick-up rumbled to a stop next to Clint’s. With the other man home, the adults banished the kids from the kitchen and with a pot of tea in the middle of the table, got down to business.

“I’ve found four apartments that are open in the City through people at work. They said they would hold them for you until the end of Saturday. After that, you’ll be out of luck.” Rick started.

Clint didn’t have much time to find and move into an apartment. He had to report for work on Wednesday morning.

Between the three of them, they sketched out a plan. Check out apartments the next day and confirm with Rick’s buddies which one he wanted. He was already leaning towards Brooklyn, where Captain America was from which was awesome. Then Sunday would be a trip to Ikea, Clint wasn’t sure why Rick gave a full-body cringe at that but whatever. Monday to move, which left Tuesday for Clint to grocery and clothes shop. After years wearing almost nothing but camouflage and then months at the academy in uniform there also, his civilian wardrobe was sorely lacking and badly out of date.

= + =

Clint was right. Of the four places, spread across the outer boroughs, the six-story walk-up with a free apartment on the second floor in Brooklyn was the one he settled on. Saturday had been an exhausting day spent crisscrossing the city. But by 7 pm they had looked at each of the apartments and signed all of the appropriate paperwork. With keys in hand, the temporarily expanded family began the trek back to Long Island.

He was tossed off the couch early the next morning. Rick standing over him grinning down at where he had landed on the floor, clutching the blanket he had used to displace Clint.

“Why?” Clint whined. Not moving from where his face was squished uncomfortably into the wood.

“Ikea opens at 8.”

“And? So? Therefore?” He finally rolled over but didn’t get up.

“Theo wants to be there for when the doors open.”

“Why?” he asked again, resigned this time. Something in his gut told him that he wasn’t likely to get a straight answer and if he did, he wouldn’t like it.

Rick shrugged down at him before leaving. The traitor blanket dropped on Clint’s face before he left. With a flick of his wrist, he sent the blanket back onto the couch and climbed off the floor. Shower, coffee, food. That’s what he needed, preferably in that order.

= + =

He was in hell. He had spent five years in the Marines, and 90% of that time out of the country in areas torn apart by war and disaster. He had chased the devil across snowy mountains and burning deserts. But a suburban Ikea on a Sunday was worse than it all.

They had joined a small crowd of over-caffeinated housewives, grumpy husbands, and bored children just before 8. The five of them hadn’t had to wait long. Clint had thought that was a blessing. Now, four hours later, he wished that that wait had been infinitely longer. The basic maps that seemed to be everywhere told him they were only about three-quarters of the way through the store. 

Why Theo thought he needed the things she had been loading into the  _ multiple trolleys _ they had commandeered, he didn’t know. And it wasn’t just the cushions and throws and sheet sets and who knew what else that she had been loading Clint and Rick up with. She also had a little notepad that she was writing numbers down in. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out what those were for. Even with both of his and their trucks parked outside, he didn’t think they were going to be able to transport it all. 

The one time he had tried to say something, Rick had grabbed his arm and squeezed. Hard. Like super hard. Like he was pretty sure that he would have Rick’s fingerprints bruised into his arm for a month. He hadn’t opened his mouth since. Just humming, pointing and nodding as needed.

It took the group another hour to get out of the display sections and into a large warehouse of shelves upon shelves of boxes. The little notebook came into its own. Theo sent Clint and Rick hurrying down each aisle, a shelve number burnt into their memories, while she and the kids waited with the trolleys.

By the time they were wheeling more stuff than Clint had owned collectively in his life, he had gotten a better workout than some of the drill sergeants had been able to lead.

They were barely able to fit everything in the cars. Both truck beds were loaded down with flat-packs and the larger items, soft or small items went into the cabs. There was so much stuff that every footwell except the driver’s was piled with bags. 

For it only being 2 pm, Clint was exhausted. All he wanted to do was collapse back into his nest of blankets. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Alexios and Diana were already waiting for them back at the house. The ex-lion tamer and acrobat knew about the rabbit and had let themselves in made coffee and cocoa while they waited. Greeting Clint with warm hugs and sighing complaints that he had lost weight, a common refrain when Clint saw anyone from Carson’s whether he had actually lost weight or not, the group moved out of the chilly promise of the approaching winter. 

Once warm drinks had been drunk, and news exchanged, they all moved back out into the slowly gathering darkness. With golden light spilling on them from inside, they moved all of the purchases from the pick-up trucks to Alexios’ delivery truck **. **

Alexios and Diana took Clint’s pick-up home. He would be back in the morning with their two kids, who were only a few years younger than Clint but who he always thought of as children, to help with the move. 

The rest of the evening was quiet. The children sent to bed early after a long day, and the adults sitting around the fireplace and talking. Telling a story when one came to mind, or just letting the crackle and spit of half green wood fill the silence. It was restful and Clint half wished he never had to leave, but he knew that a quiet suburban life wasn’t for him. At least not yet. He had things to do. Things to prove to people that would never care. Who would hear the rumors about him and take them at face value. The ex-Marine who only avoided a dishonorable discharge because of political maneuvering by people he didn’t even know. Who were only helping him to help themselves.

It was an easy slide into sleep that night surrounded by the warmth of people that saw the real him.

= + =

The household was up even earlier the next day. They wanted to beat traffic into the city so they were up before the sun. Alexios, Phillip, and Selia pulling up just as the rumble of the truck broke the misty morning. The two vehicles joined the flow of tradesmen and other delivery trucks into the City. Even getting into the city before rush hour, they were barely moving at a crawl by the time they reached the edge of Brooklyn.

Clint had left the driving to Rick. All of the driving since he got his driver’s license had been in countries that had the loosest definition of road rules in the world. He was regretting letting the other man drive. The second they had pulled away from the curb, Rick had insisted that the driver picked the music and put on a top 40 station. The poppy electronic music and sickly sweet lyrics were grating. He had been subjected to it for over an hour. The only hope was that Clint recognised the street signs and knew they would be pulling up outside his new home any second.

Rick pulled the truck into the loading zone at the front of Clint’s building just as some girl finished warbling about being a tiger. Clint almost face planted in his desperation to get out of the cab. Rick got the bird for laughing at him.

Alexios and his kids cruised past them, looking for a park on the already bumper to bumper street. Rather than waiting for them, Clint pushed open the back of the truck and they got to work, Clint in the back of the truck passing boxes down and Rick starting to stack them just inside the lockable front door. Once they had a pile half Rick’s height, Clint locked the truck and they began lugging the boxes up to the second floor. The other three were waiting outside for them when they got back from taking up the second load. With more people it started moving quicker. Clint stayed in the truck, handing down boxes and bags of stuff while they ran it upstairs. 

As he was waiting for someone to get back down and grab his new coffee table, a man across the road caught his eye. He had slightly thinning brown hair that was liberally dusted with what might have been flour and he was standing in the window of a cafe watching them. The man was hugging his imperfect mug as desperately as a drowning man would clutch a life-line and his eyes were sad as he watched Phillip and Selia jostle each other. 

Normally when he was being observed, Clint’s hackles went up like a cat faced with running water. With this guy, he just wanted to wrap the man in a warm blanket and tuck him away where whatever was making him so sad couldn’t reach him. 

A throw cushion to the side of his head pulled Clint from his thoughts. Selia smirked at him from the curb.

“You’ll have all the time you want to ogle the neighbors on your own time. Move it.” She chided playfully.

She sounded and looked so much like her mother that it caught him by surprise. A laugh erupted at the overlain image of a twenty-year-old Diana saying much the same thing to Alexios when he had been distracted by a townie only months before they finally stopped dancing around each other.

By the time he had gotten himself under control, the man in the window was gone. A warm, golden light shining from the store in his place. The pillow was whapped against his head again, pulling him back into the last little bit of unloading that needed to happen. He smiled apologetically at them and got moving.

= + =

Clint stood in the disaster zone of his apartment and glared balefully at the boxes and bags and piles of  _ stuff. _ The only piece of furniture that didn’t need to be put together was the sofa and it hadn’t been delivered yet. Ikea was meant to be there sometime between 2 and 7 pm this afternoon. Clint didn’t appreciate the lack of a definitive time. Theo had told him to get over it.

In the hour since the others had abandoned him, he had put together the coffee table, and put away his clothes. His clothes had been the easier job, there were only about six pieces in his wardrobe aside from underwear and socks, all of which were tee-shirts and jeans which didn’t need much more than to be stuffed into a drawer. He was debating getting started on the dining room chairs so he would have somewhere to sit, or going out to do his grocery shopping, when a rumbling gurgle from his stomach decided him. Food was the next priority.

The streets were teeming with people. Business-men and -women in sharp suits speed walking down the sidewalk, parents walking their kids to school, teenagers walking themselves to school, or to wherever they were going to hide from the truancy officer that day, and harried-looking university students trying to dodge everyone with their heavy, book laden bags. 

There was a supermarket a block away. Dodging between people it only took him 5 minutes to get there. The store had all of three aisles. Loading a basket with the basics, milk bread coffee etc, he was back on the sidewalk in fifteen minutes, a paper bag of food cradled possessively in each arm. 

The masses of people hadn’t gotten any thinner but with having to juggle the bags, he wasn’t able to pay as much attention to his surroundings as before. That was his excuse for why he walked straight into the man from that morning and not the disappointment that had inexplicably flooded his body at the sight of the man with a little girl. His daughter. He was married, or attached, or at the very least straight. Whichever one it was, the bolt of attraction from that morning died a quick and brutal death under his own mental stamping.

“Oh, sorry.” He apologised as their shoulders hit each other.

“No, it was…” The other man started, looking up from his kid. “Um. It was my fault. I, um, wasn't watching where I was going.” He tripped over his words.

A flash of something, appreciation? In his eyes had the attraction roaring back to life with a vengeance. “In that case, no problem.” He could feel the blush burning across his skin but the slightly flirtatious tone just slipped out.

“Um.” He started before being interrupted loudly by his daughter.

“DAD! I’m gonna be late!” She was tugging at his hand, trying to get him moving.

“Right. Sorry Skye. Let’s go.” He said to her before hurrying off.

Holy, shit. He was in trouble.


	4. Nov 2013, New York

Tuesday night, Clint collapsed into bed. Exhausted from two days of unpacking and assembling and throwing away-ing. Whatever. His brain was done, he hadn’t left the apartment building or talked to another human being in over 36 hours and he had to be up and ready to meet his new SO first thing in the morning. The chances of him being up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed were not good.

Whoever this Nick Fury guy was, he had probably already decided that he resented being lumped with Clint and his reputation and would do nothing to help him navigate SHIELD. He shoved his head under a pillow and tried to shut up the voices in the back of his skull that sounded suspiciously like the whispers that had followed him through the academy. Sometime in the early morning, he finally dropped off to sleep. Only to be jolted awake by his alarm within the hour.

Fuck.

Grumbling, he dragged himself out of bed and into the shower. His new home had an amazing hot water system which he took advantage of, standing under the pounding water for a long time, letting the water work at the knots in his shoulders and back. Eventually though he had to get out. Shaved and dressed he hurried out into the main room, he had spent too long lost in thought in the shower and was running late. Filling a travel mug with piping hot coffee and grabbing an apple, he was out the door a good five minutes later than he should have been.

SHIELD HQ was in Midtown but the paperwork had included a letter from Agent Fury telling him to meet at a place called Waffle and Dinges in Bryant park at 8 am. An hour before he was scheduled to report for duty at HQ. Clint figured it was just Fury’s way of feeling the new guy out. Being late wouldn’t help. If he didn’t run, he was going to miss the bus and miss the meeting entirely. Or have to fork out for a cab and after the spending spree Theo had conducted with his accounts over the weekend, that wasn’t something he could afford. 

He made it. Just. The doors of the bus had just started to close as he had rushed up to the stop, his hand snapped out to stop them from closing completely. He gave the driver a tight, sarcastic smile and thanks when she grumbled at him. It was standing room only, but he was getting off at the next stop so he jammed himself in between a guy who looked like a stereotypical absent-minded university professor, complete with leather patched elbows, and a sharply dressed woman in sneakers.

After the dash to the bus, he was back running on time. Swapping from bus to subway, he got into Manhattan and made his way to the park, getting there with a few minutes to spare. He didn’t know who he was looking for as he approached the waffle kiosk with a scattering of tables, so he sat at a table tucked in against the little building and waited, watching people hurry back and forth along the street, racing to work or to the gym or wherever it was they were going on a random Wednesday morning. As he sat and watched, people came up and ordered coffee and left again. No one triggered the warning in the back of his brain or seemed to be waiting for him.

The coffee in his travel mug disappeared and the hour that he had had before needing to be at the office was going along with it. After waiting for over half an hour, Clint slipped into the trees of the park and vanished. Nothing left behind to suggest he had ever been there. At 8.45 a large African-American man approached the counter and ordered a coffee. While technically weather appropriate, the man’s long, black, leather coat stood out against the grey and black wool peacoats of the people around him.

From his hiding place up an oak tree that had given up most of its leaves to autumn, Clint recognised that coat. Son of a bitch. Apparently he knew his new SO, because that was all he could be. Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, was actually Marcus Johnson, a Spook Clint had only met on op the year before. Or Marcus was actually Nick. Whatever. Either way, Clint knew him. He was a contributing factor in Clint’s continuing ability to draw a breath.

He let himself fall from the tree, landing next to the other man. A raised eyebrow was the only reaction but Clint could see that he had startled him, a gleam in the back of his eye giving it away.

“Sit your ass down Legolas.” The man’s voice was a deep growl under the higher noise of a city in constant movement.

Clint smirked. “You’re late.”

Marcus just glared at him until he sat down. That trick had impressed Clint the first time they had met, now it was just funny.

“I wanted to talk to you before you show up at SHIELD.”

“About SHIELD.” Clint cut in. “I didn’t realise you  _ were  _ SHIELD. Thought you were some CIA bigshot.”

The ill-manners earn him another glare. “I wanted to talk to you before you show up at SHIELD.” Nick started again, ignoring the implied question. 

Clint got the feeling that that was going to happen a lot, Nick just breezing past anything he didn’t feel like answering.

“People have heard about what happened in Nepal. Some know the full story. Most, particularly the juniors who you are going to be working with, don’t.”

That was nice, that some people knew the whole story. Unfortunately, Clint wasn’t one of them. Clint also took that to mean that he was about to walk into the very definition of a hostile work environment. Awesome.

“I need you to put up with it for a while. Your work is good. You’re the best at what you do.”

Clint bit down on the urge to preen under the praise.

“Not just the sniping. You see things. I need that.” Nick finished.

“What am I looking for?” Clint asked after getting the threatening blush under control.

“At the moment, everything. Just observe. Keep putting on the anti-social bullshit you were pulling at the Academy.” The large man stood from the white-painted cafe chair he had been dwarfing. “Oh. This never happened.” He was swallowed up by the crowd before Clint had even acknowledged the order.

His watch told him he had only ten minutes to cover the five blocks to the office for the official start to his day. Joy.

= + =

Clint had sauntered through the front doors of SHIELD NY HQ three minutes and fifteen seconds after he was meant to be there. Most of the suits were in movement. Some coming in, swiping security badges, saying hello to the receptionists if they were that sort of person. Others were heading out, briefcases and bags clutched tightly as they went to meet with their contacts or to infiltrate corporate entities or whatever it was that suits did all day.

There was a single point of stillness in the otherwise constant movement. A latino man, slightly shorter than Clint was standing in the exact center of the lobby. One eye on his watch and the other on the door. The second Clint pushed through the revolving doors it was apparent that he was waiting for Clint and that he knew what he looked like. 

“You’re late.” He greeted, hostility and judgment thick in the unnamed man’s voice.

“Traffic.” Clint shrugged, gathering a veneer of nonchalance around his body like armour. 

The day didn’t get any better from there.

The escort didn’t bother introducing himself, just let Clint through security and deposited him with HR. After an hour of paperwork, and being loaded down with books and manuals, hadn’t he already gone through training?, the man was back and took him into the bowls of the building to an underground range. He watched as Clint worked his way through every standard weapon they had on-site. Every shot was perfect. He gave a grunt of what might have been grudging respect and whisked him away to a building security brief. From there lunch and then more lectures and briefings.

Clint was bored and annoyed. No one had had a kind word to say to him. Everyone had either avoided talking to him or, if forced to interact with the new company pariah, were sullen. He only learned his escort’s name, Sitwell, because the lunch lady had greeted him in earshot. At 4 pm when Sitwell, first name still unknown, let him go, he hadn’t seen head nor tails of Fury.

“Aren’t I going to at least meet my SO before I go?” Clint glowered, standing in the lobby which was much quieter than it had been that morning. Arms crossed belligerently.

Sitwell shrugged at him and disappeared back into the building.

Awesome.

= + =

The rest of the week passed in the same fashion. Sitwell meeting him each morning only to abandon him as soon as possible at medical and psych and the quartermasters.

The first person to even smile at him was a girl who looked like she should have still been in high school and who he shared a table with at lunch on Friday. Every other table had glared at him when he had turned in their direction. The mousy-haired woman had been tucked into a table in the back corner on her own. An untouched tray at her elbow and a book that was probably heavier than she was, open in front of her, a collection of pens holding her hair back in a messy bun and another one clenched between her teeth as she flipped pages. Stopping every now and again to scribble furiously, sometimes in the book sometimes on the sheaf of papers opposite her untouched lunch. The slight clatter of his metal tray had broken her concentration, glancing up she had gifted him with a single, mostly distracted smile and immediately been absorbed in her book again.

It was nice.

The rest of the day stole that little bit of lightness from him. Another session with the psych, where he was asked endless questions about his… unique… childhood. He didn’t know if they thought he was lying about it or were just fascinated by the exotic nature of having followed through on every child’s dream of running away to the circus. What he did know was that they were wasting time. For what he didn’t know, but after four days of being shuffled around the building he also didn’t care. If he didn’t see Marcus soon he was going to ghost. He didn’t care that it had been strongly suggested that the only reason they hadn’t court marshaled him was because shadowy sides of the government had stepped in and he now  _ owed them _ .

He was in a fucking terrible mood by the time he got off the bus a block from his apartment. A lonely weekend the only thing to look forward to after a lonely week. He was about to unlock the front door to his building when the golden light that spilled out of the cafe across the road caught his eye. He hadn’t seen the man from Monday since they had literally bumped into each other that first day. The warmth and the sound of laughter drew him like a moth to the flame. Maybe spending some time around normal people, people who hadn’t heard the stories of the traitor Marine who had been let into the Agency, would help the depression that was beginning to settle in behind his ribs.

Removing his key from the lock without turning it, he drifted across the road and into the shop. The warm light was accompanied by the smell of caramel and cinnamon. The coffee machine hissed on the counter and a burst of laughter from a group of kids, who were probably the same age as him, almost startled him. The life and light were intoxicating.

“Welcome to Pekar what can I get for you?” The man behind the counter wasn’t the guy from Monday. He looked around the same age as Clint but was smaller and his dark hair and eyes suggested a Central American ancestry. He was nice enough to look at, handsome even, but Clint would have rather been greeted by the blue eyes of Monday-Man.

“Sir?”

“Sorry.” Clint blinked back into the present, glancing up at the handwritten chalk menu. “Uh, a black coffee and an upside-down caramel apple muffin.” 

“Sure thing. Have here or take away?” He asked as he tapped away at the register, his words rote enough and smile too fake for Clint to count the interaction as friendly. At most he could say it wasn’t hostile.

“Here.” The place wasn’t overflowing with people and he had spotted a soft-looking armchair in a corner that looked comfortable and had good sightlines.

“No problem. That’s $5.30. I’ll bring it out when it’s ready.” He dismissed Clint and moved on to the next person.

Clint retreated. Winding his way through the closely placed furniture. If all the tables and chairs had matched, the room would have looked over full. But the mix of dining chairs at proper tables, and armchairs and sofas, all in different fabrics, pulled close around low coffee tables just gave it a warm inviting atmosphere. More like a lived-in and loved home than a business. Clint adored it.

There were two bookcases set up kitty-corner just behind the chair he was aiming for that were stuffed full of worn paperbacks. His hands itched to see what they had, there had been a sort of book club, maybe book swap was a better term, in the circus. In any town that had a second-hand bookshop someone would pick up a few books and they would be passed around half the circus until they got their next opportunity to stop for more. Most of what Clint had learned before joining the military had come from those books. The subject had been entirely dependent on who went to get them. Theo favored mythologies, Jeremy anything science, Sarah liked romance novels. Clint preferred histories and biographies. He liked reading about other people’s lives, seeing that at heart they were all the same, just looking for a home and love and acceptance. Looking for safety. 

Next time. Next time he would see what they had. For now, he just wanted to people watch.

Rounding the back of the armchair sitting across from the one he wanted, the sight of a kid nestled in the depths of the seat brought him to a crashing halt. She had her head bent over a workbook, maths by the looks of it, and hadn’t noticed him standing next to her chair. Looking around her for a parent, he couldn’t see anyone that she could ostensibly be with. There was only one cup, a half empty mug of cocoa, on the table and there wasn’t a bag or jacket to suggest someone was using the chair he had been going to sit in.

“Um, hi. Sorry.” He tried not to startle her. It didn’t work, she jumped when he spoke. Dark eyes blinked up at him from under a slightly too long fringe. “Are your parents around?” Something about her was setting off a niggle in the back of his skull. He had seen her before. Just as she opened her mouth, he placed her. It was Monday-Man’s kid.

“Daddy’s working.” She pointed in the direction of the counter and then went back to her homework.

“Uh. Ok. Right.” Clint cringed at himself. “Do you mind if I sit?” He asked, waving at the chair across from her.

“Nah-uh.” She shook her head without looking up.

“Awesome.” Feeling that sitting and watching the room with her sitting there could be considered creepy, he grabbed a random book off the shelf and settled.

The worn leather of the chair was soft and supple with age and use. Well stuffed without being hard, he could imagine staying in that chair all day. He liked the new sofa in his place fine, but it was still factory fresh and needed some more time on it before it really felt welcoming.

He hadn’t meant to get caught up in the biography of Howard Stark. But he had read the first page to make it look like he was doing more than subtly watching the people around him. And then the next, and the next, and the next. Before he knew it, he had drunk a coffee that he didn’t remember getting, eaten a muffin that had been warm and gooey and fantastic, and had read the first third of the book. When the fuck had that happened?

The little girl, Skye his brain supplied from its’ depths, having remembered Monday Man calling it out just before he walked into the taller man, had moved on from her maths. She was mouthing words to herself from one of the Harry Potter books. A plate with a half-eaten sandwich had replaced the cocoa.

He had been watching her for too long, her eyes flicked up to meet his.

“Daddy likes that book.” She offered, a half nod at the biography that Clint had a finger in, holding his place.

“It’s pretty good.” He agreed.

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s boring. Magic is better.” She waved her own book at him.

It was the first of the series but looked well-loved, the spine cracked and worn from use.

They fell into easy conversation. Her telling him about the book, and him showing her a quick magic trick. A coin disappearing from his hand and reappearing from her ear. It wasn’t the height of illusion but she giggled and it was an easy one to do anywhere. Carefully he showed her how it worked. Her hands were too little to hide the coin but with some growth and practice, Clint thought she would easily get the hang of it.

He was yawning before she was.

“Well, kid. I gotta go. It’s past my bedtime.” He grinned as he stood, fighting his way out of the chair.

She giggled at the idea that an adult had a bedtime, especially one that was before her’s. “Bye Clint!” She waved as he left, kneeling on her chair to wave for as long as possible.

The little cafe was still bustling. A group of students at one table loudly debating Aristotle, and at another two girls giggling over a phone. A sense of community and returning customers pervaded the place. Clint could see himself joining the group.

The street outside was still busy. Clint dodged between people and then cars. Inside his own building, he could hear life from the other apartments: the blare of a tv, a shouting match on the ground floor, laughter and chatter from the home across from his. The space behind his door was quiet. He knew it would be desolate and cold but had to face it. His hackles rose the moment he stepped through the door. Not as desolate as it should have been. Someone was here. 

Easing the door closed behind himself, he drew the pistol that he had stashed in the back of his pants. The layout of his furniture was burned into his brain, even after only a week of living there. He was able to move like a disembodied shadow through the dark space. For the second time that night he rounded an armchair that should have been empty only to find it occupied.

“Marcus.” The handgun that he was not cleared to have off SHIELD property yet, was put to safe and squirreled away again.

“Barton.” His absent SO said. “You’re late.”

“I didn’t know we had a meeting.” Turning his back, he wandered around the room. Turning on lights and setting the kettle to boil. If Marcus was here he wasn’t getting to sleep any time soon. Coffee was a must.

Marcus, the bastard, didn’t move. Just waited until Clint’s natural curiosity drew him back. It worked. With a scowl he dropped on the sofa, dumping a mug in front of his maybe friend and kept one for himself. He may have been the one to return but he had a sniper’s patience, he wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence.

“How were your first few days?” Marcus broke first.

“You would know if you had been doing your job,” Clint grumbled into his mug. Putting it on the coffee table he had to sigh. “It was fine. People were dicks just like you said they would be. The friendliest exchange I had, was a random teenager smiling at me today at lunch.”

“Welcome to SHIELD.” The tone was viciously sarcastic.

= + =

Marcus leant back in his chair and watched the younger man slumped on the sofa. The archer already looked like he had the world on his shoulders and Marcus was about to add a shit load more. He felt bad for that, he liked the archer’s spark that in the face of a horrifying situation hadn’t been dulled.

He knew what he was about to ask was going to be hard on the young man. From all reports, the Clint from before Nepal had been a vivacious, outgoing, friendly guy. When they met, he had seen that Clint had withdrawn a little. He had hoped that it was temporary, but so far everything suggested it wasn’t, and his first assignment was only going to make that worse. “You’ll start getting assignments soon.”

“Great. I get to put my life in the hands of people I don’t trust and who don’t trust me. Why are you here? None of this is something we couldn’t’ve talked about on company property.”

“SHIELD’s got a mole.”

Clint shot up, the words punching into him. Marcus saw the understanding in his eyes. That what was about to come was going to be hard. The antagonism from these last few days was probably going to get worse. 

Clint rubbed roughly at his face. They both knew he was going to have to be friends with people he hated and avoid anyone he might actually want to get to know. And when it all came out, that he had been investigating agents, anyone he had made friends with would be questioning every interaction they ever had with him.

Marcus regretted the circumstances that brought them to this, the likely consequences that would see the happy, friendly man permanently disappear.

“What do I have to do?” Clint asked, voice hard, accepting what was to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014091-upside-down-caramel-apple-muffins


	5. DEC 2004  - JUL 2005, South Carolina and New York

Christmas break that year was the worst that Phil had ever experienced. Getting Ann to the baby doctor just before Christmas, and being reassured of her and the baby’s health, had been a trial of lies that neither of them were used to. He hadn't seen her since. A few emails and that was it. 

His house was cold and quiet for the two weeks of the holiday break. The Coulson family didn’t celebrate any of the holidays, not since Maria Coulson left almost five years ago. He was drifting through the days, not saying a word, trying to focus on homework. It didn’t work. His mind skittered across the lines of text in his history book. Skipped over the numbers and diagrams of calculus. Every time he tried to do anything, thoughts of Ann and their baby overtook everything else.

Returning to school a few days into the new year was a relief. Being out from under the accusing glare of his father and being able to check on Ann both. He hurried through the packed hallways, the sounds of friends catching up on their ski trips and European tours echoing in the vaulted ceilings. The sea of blue, white and khaki uniforms hid Ann’s lithe form. Phil had learned a long time ago to look for her long, black, pin-straight hair among the blonde and light brown of most of the student population.

He couldn’t find her anywhere. She wasn’t at her locker, or his. The library was deserted except for the librarian (who, rumour had it, had been there since the school opened a hundred years ago). Sometimes Ann went to homeroom early, but when she wasn’t there, he didn’t know where else to look. There was nowhere else they hung out before school. Moving slower than before, he wove his way back to his locker. He needed to get his books for his morning classes.

All day he looked for her, though they weren’t meant to have any classes together until after lunch. She wasn’t at their normal table. Finn and Gina were the only ones there. Phil slipped in next to Finn and dropped his bag at his feet.

“Hey. How was your Christmas Phil?” Gina lent around her boyfriend to talk to him, her short strawberry blonde hair sweeping in front of her face as she moved.

“Fine. You?” He wanted to ask about Ann but had to get through the pleasantries first.

“We went ice skating and then to Myrtle Beach for the fireworks.” Normally her grin was infectious. Today it just grated.

“That sounds fun. Have you guys seen Ann today? I couldn't find her this morning.” The segway was the worst he had ever used, but his anxiety didn’t allow for normal smooth small talk.

The look they exchanged wasn’t helping.

Finn cast a quick look around before leaning in and speaking in a low voice. “Didn’t you hear, man? She’s pregnant. Her parents pulled her from school.”

The blood drained from his face. Intellectually, Phil knew they wouldn’t have been able to hide the pregnancy, but he hadn’t thought she would just disappear. That her family would just hide her. His mind started whirring with white noise and an odd whining sound that he didn’t recognise.

For the rest of the day, he drifted through classes. Answering questions when he was addressed but putting even more distance between himself and his classmates. When the last bell rang he was the first one out the door, almost sprinting from the building. It was a long three blocks from the school campus to Ann’s house. Each step felt like he was only covering an inch. He banged on the door twice, before thinking better of it. Taking a deep breath to reign in his raging emotions, he tapped the doorbell instead. Put a step between himself and the door to try and stop himself from banging on the door again.

Eventually, he rang the doorbell again.

“Phil?” Ann’s tentative voice came from behind him.

He whirled around. She was coming up the driveway, dressed in the uniform for St Bridgid’s. The school was in Dayton, the next town over and from what he had heard, specialised in ‘troubled cases’. 

“You can’t be here.” She hurried up to him. “If my parents see you here… Please, Phil. Go.”

The school shirt hung awkwardly on her. Three sizes bigger than she normally wore and pushed out the tiniest amount in the stomach. She was starting to show.

“Ann, I just-.”

“No. Phil. Please go.” She walked past him and slipped through the door, only opening it enough to squeeze through.

He was left alone at the bottom of the stairs. She wasn’t going to come out and talk to him, and she was right. If her parents found out that he was here, now that they knew, there would be hell to pay.

With a heavy heart, he left.

= + =

January and then the first week of February passed with no word from Ann. Phil sent her an email each day, asking how the new school was, if she had made friends, how the baby was doing. Anything he could think of. Each one went unanswered. He was losing hope but kept trying. She was his best friend. And this was both of their faults. She didn’t deserve to be the only one punished for it.

Finally, on the second Friday of February, there was an email waiting for him when he shuffled through his front door after a long day at school. It was short, but it was the first that he had heard from Ann since that day on her front lawn.

_ Hi Phil, _

_ Sorry I haven’t written back. Mom and Dad have been watching my internet. _

_ I had an ultrasound today. They said I’m due early July. I also found out the gender. I didn’t know if you wanted to know, so I put it in the attachment. Read it or not. I won’t tell you if you don’t want to know. _

_ Ann _

Eagerly, Phil clicked into the attachment. He knew so little about what was happening with Ann and their baby, he would take any scrap of information he could get. The attachment was even shorter than the email.

_ It’s a girl. _

Phil sat back from the computer. A girl. He had to get up and move. Walking around the room in repeating circles, his mind whirled. They were going to have a daughter. He sat back down and his fingers flew across the keys.

_ Dear Ann, _

_ It’s so good to hear from you. I hope things are going ok at your new school. Everything is going as normal at St James’. Finn and Gina say hi. They ask about you. _

_ A little girl? That’s amazing. I hope your parents will let me see you soon. _

_ Phil. _

The email could have been longer. He probably could have written a novel with everything that he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her about Gina and Finn’s fight about living in a dorm versus getting their own place when they went to the University of South Carolina, doing a good impression of the old married couple that Ann and Phil often joked their friends were. He wanted to tell her about how Coach Evans had been a colossal dick during swim practice that week. But he didn’t. He needed to send it as soon as possible so that she could write back again.

For the rest of the night and all of Saturday, he paced between the computer and the kitchen, waiting for a response. With no answer by Sunday morning, he gave up. Or at least he tried to, pushing the nervous anticipation to the back of his mind. He half-heartedly tried to finish his schoolwork instead, the resulting scrawl hardly legible and probably as full of errors as correct answers. He didn’t care. 

Another week passed. On the next Friday, there was another email waiting.

For months that’s how it went, each Friday there was an email waiting for him, and each one was longer than the last. He wasn’t able to meet with her, but slowly they figured out what they were going to do. After graduation, he would stay in South Carolina for the birth, and then sign up to the Army like he had planned. Sending money back to Ann and the baby, he was going to stay in until he could use the GI track to get his college degree. Ann would look after the baby and work if she could, then go to college when Phil had saved enough to help. They knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, but at least they felt like there was a plan, a way out of the mess they had made.

May passed in a blur. Exams took up the first half of the month, long days in hot and claustrophobic classrooms. Studying and papers merged, one into the next. Eyes gritty with a lack of sleep and hands and feet jittery with too much caffeine. The middle of the month was an anxious wait for results, seemingly insignificant numbers and letters that would help to determine their future. Without the distraction of studying, Phil lost himself in the kitchen. Baking and cooking any comfort food that he craved. 

The last week was a whirlwind of photos and farewell parties and then the graduation ceremony itself. Phil avoided as many of the events as possible, and when he couldn’t, he stuck to the edges. Finn and Gina did their best to pull him out of the shell he was building around himself, thicker every day, but it was no use. He hadn’t seen Ann in six months. He had never felt his baby kick, and it didn’t seem like he ever would.

May slid into June on the back of a massive heatwave, with school finished and two months until he needed to show up at Fort Benning, Georgia. Phil needed to find something to do with himself, so he started looking for a summer job. He slugged through the heat, passing out resumes and asking if anyone needed work done - anything to fill the long, lonely days. 

At the bakery, Pete needed someone to look after the dough, and lug it in and out of the ovens first thing in the morning. It wasn’t glamorous or interesting, but it was a job. Something to do. Something to get him out of the house. In the afternoons, Tom needed a hand doing some landscaping for a new estate being built just out of town. Phil worked from before the sun rose until after it set, too tired to worry about what day it was when he dragged his exhausted body home each night. For the first time in years, George was ‘proud’ of him, both for his work ethic and for realising that he wasn’t any better than his dear old drunk dad. That getting a scholarship to that ‘fancy private school’ didn’t change where he came from.

June passed in a haze of flour and dirt.

Just before midnight on the 1st of July, Ann called. The house phone was loud in his ear, but his alarm would have woken him in a few hours anyway. It was the call he had been waiting for, Ann had finally gone into labor. She hadn’t told her parents yet, despite the pain rippling through her in slow rolling waves. Based on what Phil had read in books, they had a while until she needed to go to the hospital.

That morning, he went to the bakery, taking over from Pete so that the baker could go home. Phil moved through his duties using muscle memory alone. His mind was half a town away with Ann. Afterward, he called Tom to tell him that he wasn’t coming in. He was going to the hospital instead. He knew that Ann’s parents would try to stop him from seeing her, but he had to try. He had to be there, so that one day when his little girl asked, he could say that he had been there when she came into the world.

For the rest of his life, he would thank every God he could name that he went to the hospital that day. 

“Excuse me. Where can I find the Maternity Ward?” He asked the woman sitting at the reception desk, breathing hard from the rush from his car. “Excuse me.” He said again when she ignored him.

“Sixth floor.” She muttered without looking up from her computer screen, waving a lazy hand towards a bank of elevators off to the right. People hurried in and out as the metal doors sighed open and closed. The lifeblood of a busy institution.

He thanked her even though he could tell she didn’t hear him, as manners were manners no matter how the other person was acting. He slipped into an almost full elevator car and hit the 6th floor button, one of the few that hadn’t already been selected. Each time to car slowed to let someone on or off, his leg bounced harder with anticipation. Each creeping inch higher was closer to Ann and their baby. 

When he stepped out of the elevator, the floor was busy. Nurses in bright blue and pink scrubs pushed soon-to-be parents into delivery rooms or introduced new parents to their children. Doctors in white coats were busy with consultations or following beds into rooms. This was chaos, tinged with happiness and anxiety. Screams of pain mixed with the cries of newborns, and the cheers of newly expanded families.

Everyone was so busy, and the reception desk was unoccupied. How was he going to find Ann in all of the movement and sound? Leaving everyone to their work, he decided to look for her himself. The ward couldn’t be that big, could it? He was halfway around the floor before he saw any sign of her. Ann’s dad was standing beside an almost closed door talking to a woman that Phil didn’t recognise.

“Mr. Bai, sir. Good afternoon.” Phil stopped beside the two adults, straightening his back and shoulders under his flour-dusted shirt. Trying desperately to look older than he was. Trying to look respectable.

“Mr. Coulson. You’re not welcome here.” The frown sent in his direction was fiercely disapproving.

“Is this the father?” Asked the woman Phil didn’t know.

“Yes ma’am, I am.” He held a hand out for her to shake.

Her hand was cool and dry against his clammy skin. He rubbed it nervously against the fabric of his jeans when she withdrew from the handshake. The calm woman in a business suit in amongst the chaos of a maternity ward didn’t belong. He didn’t trust it.

“My name is Sharon Green. I’m with Carolina Adoption Services.” She handed him a sleek business card on expensive paper stock.

“Adoption Services?”

“Yes, Mr. Coulson. I have some paperwork for you to sign.” She held up a thick stack of papers in an official-looking manila folder.

“Paperwork?” The question was asked in stereo. The lightly accented voice of Ann’s father in concert with his almost broken-in baritone.

“Yes gentlemen, paperwork. As the birth father, Mr. Coulson needs to sign away his rights before Baby Bai can be placed with an adoptive family.” 

One part of Phil’s brain noted that the words were rote, something repeated so often that Phil could tell she didn’t mean them. Another part trying to figure out when Ann had even brought up the idea of adoption. He knew that he had told her he didn’t want to give up the baby. Their baby. The rest of his mind was screaming. 

“No.” His mouth was speaking without the consent of his brain, although his brain supported the independent reaction absolutely. As far as his brain was concerned, ‘No’ was the correct answer.

“Why?” Said Mr. Bai at the same time, except his mouth continued making noise. “Ann is underage. We are her parents. We consent.”

“Does Ann even want this?” Phil turned to the older man.

“She is seventeen, she doesn’t know what she wants.” He scoffed. 

“Regardless, under South Carolina law, both parents need to sign away their parental rights. NO matter their age.” She spoke louder when Mr. Bai tried to break in, steamrolling right over whatever he was trying to say.

“I’m not signing,” Phil replied and crossed his arms. He knew it made him look petulant, but after months of stress and staring down the unknown, the last of his self-control had been whittled away. He wanted his child and he wasn’t going to let this man give her away. 

“And what are you going to do? Keep working some dead-end job? Make Ann give up her bright future to stay home and look after a baby?” Mr. Bai didn’t get loud when he was angry, he got quiet. Phil could hardly hear him over the general hubbub of the hospital and had to lean in close to fully make out the words. As a control tactic, it was top notch. He hated that he subconsciously gave into it even when he recognised it was happening.

“There is nothing wrong with my job.” Phil straightened back up, trying to regain a semblance of control. He couldn’t really dispute what Mr Bai was saying. Other than changing the work he was doing, everything that he’d said was true. Phil was asking Ann to give up on Stanford. The college had been her dream for as long as he had known her. 

“Oh yes. Bakery assistant and gardener. What a bright future.” 

“Gentlemen.” Ms. Green broke in.

Silently, Phil thanked her. He didn’t really have a defense.

“Mr. Bai, you cannot force your daughter or Mr. Coulson to sign. If you attempt to, it would throw the adoption process into question, which I assure you no one wants. Why don’t you go back to your family.” She raised an eyebrow and flicked her head in the direction of the hospital door behind them. “Mr. Coulson, why don’t we sit.” She indicated a couple of vinyl chairs tucked up against the wall in the corridor. “Have you really thought this through? A baby is hard. And it doesn’t get any easier as they grow. It might be in everyone’s best interest to give this baby to a family that’s prepared to look after her. Just think about it.”

She passed over a large envelope that Phil was sure contained information on the adoption process and maybe even prospective parents. He sat there alone for a long time after she had left, staring down at the folder without making a move to open it. They were asking him to make a decision about a baby he hadn’t even seen. God, he didn’t even know if she had come into the world yet. But he loved her.

A very quiet part of his brain was telling him that maybe Ms. Green was right. Maybe his little girl would be better off with someone else. The louder part of his brain was arguing that nobody could love her more than him. He had never seen her, outside of the blurry sonogram that Ann had sent him months ago. He had never felt her move, but he loved that little girl. He imagined watching her grow up. At night he had lain in his bed and tried to picture her, to see if she had his hair or Ann’s, maybe his mother’s nose, but all he knew for sure was that she would be her own person, and he loved her with everything he had.

He couldn’t give her up.

Dropping the envelope in a trashcan, he went to find a nurse to take him to his daughter.

= + =

After renegotiating his start times with Pete and Tom, Phil was able to squeeze in an hour between the bakery and landscaping to visit Ann in the hospital, and then to go back again to help with the dinnertime feeding. For a week, he was walking on air. It took them three days to agree on a name, Skye Ming-huá Coulson. 

Mr. and Mrs. Bai ignored Phil every time he came to see Ann and Skye, leaving the room if he was staying and responding only with a chilly stare if he tried to talk to them. It was the only thing that brought him down. The delivery was hard on Ann, she was so small, which was why the doctors kept her in for almost a week before finally letting her go home. When he stopped at the hospital on his lunch break, the day before his 18th birthday, Ann was half packed to go home.

“Phil.” Her smile of greeting was tired, but content. “I get to go home this afternoon.” 

Mr. Bai stepped through the door before he could do more than smile at her. The older man’s calm expression turned dark seeing Phil in the room.

“You’re not coming.” He picked up the small duffle back Ann had just zipped closed and left as quickly as he had come.

“I’m sorry Phil. I’ll talk to them. You will get to see her.” Her smile was sad and not reassuring as she probably thought it was.

“Sure.” His return smile was better, more convincing even if it was as sad as hers.

He hadn’t seen his daughter today, and he probably wasn’t going to see her again for a while. Leaving the hospital, he drove in a daze to the home Tom and the crew were currently working on. Sun and soil burning all thought from his mind. The repetitive, hard work was meditative for his mind and body. Getting home to a dark, empty house brought it all back. The loneliness that was steadily taking hold of his spirit digging in deeper. The last week of twice-daily visits to the hospital and holding the tiny body of his child had pushed it back. It was back at double strength. The night before his 18th birthday and he had exactly zero people that he could call.

Fin and Gina had left to backpack around Europe before school started in the fall. Ann was at home with Skye under the eagle eyes of her parents. His mom was who knew where and his dad was probably at Shakey’s halfway to blackout drunk.

Leaving all of the lights off except for the table lamp next to the couch he curled up as much as his lanky body would allow and lost himself in a Peggy Carter biography. The words were known but absorbing, comforting after many late-night re-reads.

He fell asleep on the soft cushions sometime around when Agent Carter had returned to New York after D-Day.

A car door slamming and then an engine rumbling to life woke him. The golden light of the lamp outshining the pinks and purples starting to creep over the horizon outside the lounge room window. He had the morning off from the bakery, Pete giving him the sleep in for his birthday, and didn’t need to be awake for a few hours.

Stretching to his no longer insignificant length, he debated going back to sleep on the warm cushions of the couch or migrating to his bed. Feeling too lazy to move, he had decided to stay where he was when a sound outside had him sitting up.

The movement of cars in the early morning had woken him, but they were the normal sounds of suburbia and his mind had ignored them. Whatever had just caught his attention was out of place. Unexpected.

It came again.

The soft cry of an infant that over the last week he had become very familiar with. Straining his ears, it came again, louder this time. It was close. Rolling off the couch, he landed on the floor with a soft thud and was up and moving before the sound had dissipated. Peeking out the front window showed a street devoid of any other living person. The sound hadn’t been a mother walking past with a stroller. Cracking open the door, the source of the noise quickly became clear. 

A car seat sat alone on his front door, a soft pink blanket draped over it that Phil recognised. He had bought that blanket weeks ago and given it to Skye. Throwing the door open he covered the few feet to where the carrier was in two large strides. Pulling the blanket back, he was met with the blinking, half-awake eyes of his baby girl. A piece of paper was tucked in beside her.

He unstrapped her and pulled her from the seat, carefully cradling her head and body just like the nurse had shown him. Settling on the steps, he unfolded the paper one handed, staring down at the words for a long time. Comprehension did not really come. The note was short.

_ You want her, you can have her. _

The handwriting wasn’t one he recognised. After years of passing notes in class with Ann, he knew her writing as well as his own. This wasn’t it. 

The sun rose and the street filled as he stared down at those seven words. Such a short missive that was almost as life changing as a little piece of plastic had been less than a year ago.

Thinking of the day that everything had changed and Ann sitting beside him on that cold tile, he had Skye strapped back in her seat and was halfway to his car before what he was doing registered. Ann never would have given Skye up. She wouldn’t have abandoned her on his doorstep, not even ringing the bell. If he hadn’t been asleep on the couch, who knows how long it would have been until he found her. What if he had been at work? Anyone could have taken her and he wouldn’t even have known she was gone.

Ann wouldn’t have risked that.

He had to run back inside to grab his keys off their hook beside the door. But then he was off. Driving well below the speed limit, more because he had Skye in the car than for any fear of being charged with speeding. Today he wouldn’t have cared if he had half the sheriff's station chasing him.

The drive across town felt like it lasted forever. A solar system formed and died in the time it took for each stop light to flicker from red to green. Pulling to stop outside Ann’s house, he felt like he should have aged a hundred years. Lifting Skye from the warmth of her seat, she squirmed. The cool air of the early morning unwanted as it slipped between the layers of her clothes. He pulled her in close to his body to support her and keep her warm. At the contact she settled, looking up at him with grey-brown eyes that didn’t really focus on anything. A little hand waved as it escaped the confines of her cloth wrap.

The walk from the road to the wide front steps was gone in a blink. Skye whined at the shrill sound of the doorbell. He had only rung it once when the sound of quick footsteps could be heard on the other side of the door.

“Phillip.” Mrs. Bai opened the door, not sounding surprised to find him on her doorstep.

“Where’s Ann?” He demanded. Done with everything. Done with Ann’s parents dictating how this whole arrangement was going to work.

“Not here.” She tried to close the door.

He jammed a foot in between the heavy door and the frame. “That’s not good enough. Where is she?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?” He wasn’t going to let this go.

She glared at him. She had never approved of him as a friend for her only child, he didn’t come from a good family, he didn’t come from money, and there were too many questions about his proclivities. In her mind, Ann had been tainted by proximity, her daughter would have been like every other girl out there if she didn’t hang out with Phil.

“She has gone to my sister’s. She will go to school there now.”

This time Phil let her close the door. Mrs. Bai only had one sister. Ann’s aunt lived in Hong Kong. They had exiled her for not giving up her child. And there was nothing he could do about it. Ann was still underage. She didn’t turn 18 for another two months. He was on his own until at least then, and that’s if she came back at all.

Skye started fussing as he trudged back to the car. Cuddling her close he lent against the cool metal and just let himself sag. Exhausted. What the fuck was he going to do now? The neighbors were starting to give him weird looks as they started filtering out for work. A few watching him out of the corner of their eyes as their cars crawled past. He had to move or one of them was going to call the cops on him.

With Skye clipped in the back of his car, he climbed in and needed to sit for another moment. What the fuck was he going to do now? One thing was clear, he couldn’t stay where he was. Starting the car he went home.

His dad’s peeling pick-up was in the driveway when he pulled in. Great. Another thing to deal with. It was even odds that George Coulson had spent all night at a bar and was roaring drunk, or had gone home with someone and was sloppy with endorphins and recently got laid smugness. Neither option was appealing, but the latter was safer.

Slamming kitchen cabinetry greeted him as Phil walked through the front door, Skye in her car seat hanging from one hand.

“Where the fuck have you been?” His dad shouted from the other room.

“Out.” Phil went for the stairs. He couldn’t keep Skye away from George indefinitely, but from the sounds of it, the older man was still drunk and now wasn’t the time to introduce them.

“What is that?” George spat from directly behind him. The lack of expletives sent every alarm bell Phil had ringing.

“Skye.” He turned to face his dad, better to see the blows coming, maybe dodge some of them.

“What is it doing here?” Other than a few snide comments, George had been single minded in ignoring the fact that Phil had a kid on the way. One of his drinking buddies had laughingly told him about it months ago.

“I’m taking her.” Phil pulled the carrier into both arms, cradling it against his body.

“No.”

“Yes.” Phil turned to keep going up the stairs.

A hand wrapped in the back of his shirt and yanked. Bringing him back to the ground floor. With no arms to balance himself, he was sent stumbling, unable to catch himself before George was on him again, shoving at his shoulder. A fist connected with his face. The alcohol running through his father’s veins muting the force enough to save him a trip to the ER with a broken cheekbone. Another shove. Everything was coming at him too fast to do more than curl around the screaming baby in his arms. 

Protect her! His mind was screaming in concert with her cries.

He tripped on the edge of the ratty hallway rug. Sent sprawling on his back and out of the reach of flying fists, George changed to kicks. One in the ribs. Another in the hip. Above him, George was panting with the effort of the onslaught.

He had used the last of his energy for the second kick. Slumped against the wall, George just looked down at Phil. From his place huddled on the ground, his father had never looked so old and small. Phil had his daughter in his arms, she was safe even as he was bleeding and bruised. He scooted across the floor and then up the wall. Once he was upright, Phil grabbed his screaming child and raced upstairs. Throwing open draws and cupboards, he threw everything he owned into a couple of bags. With them slung over one shoulder and Skye’s carrier in the other arm, he raced back down. George was sitting in the hallway, face slack, eyes unseeing.

Phil paused next to him. A part of him saying he should say something. Say goodbye. Or I’m sorry. Something to keep the possibility of reconciliation open. The rest of him told him to leave. To get out while he could. To get out before George had a chance to come after the defenseless child he had helped create. In the end, he left without a word.


	6. 2013, New York

Clint spent most of what was left of Friday night tossing and turning in bed. Head full of mole hunts and having to face an agency full of suspects on Monday. And he had thought his first week as a full Agent had been bad.

Dawn was barely painting the city orange when he gave up on the idea of sleep. Maybe a run would exhaust him enough for a daytime nap.

Rolling out of bed gracefully, he clambered into sweats and a ratty, old Marines shirt that he had had since his first day in basic. Runners on, he headed out to explore the neighborhood. The last week had been busy enough that he hadn’t had a chance to get the lay of the land yet. An oversight that he was going to rectify.

Jogging down the stairs and out the front door, his eye was caught by movement in the dark cafe across the road. Slowing, he paid closer attention. None of the shops should have been occupied so early, and the lack of lights was even more suspicious. He slowly jogged past, watching the figure in his peripheral vision until he lost line of sight. Then he was running. Sprinting around the corner and ducking into the alley that the line of buildings shared with the other side of the block.

Counting his steps, he stopped at the back door of the cafe. A large length of wood, broken from a pallet, had been forgotten amidst the other detritus of a New York alley. He was just able to wrap his hand around it in a firm grip, the splinters were going to be a bitch, and silently edged the door open. The door being unlocked wasn’t a great sign either.

On silent feet, he moved through the shadows. The clatter of cupboards being opened and rifled through got louder as he moved further into the building. The hallway split, one door leading to a short hallway and stairs, and the other into a kitchen much larger than he had been expecting to find. A man slightly taller but not as broad as Clint was across the spotless, stainless steel expanse, pulling things from a tall cupboard. Most of him was wreathed in shadows in the pre-dawn morning.

“Put Your Hands Up!” Clint channeled every drill instructor he had ever had.

The man’s arms were instantly above his head. The bag that he had taken from the cupboard was allowed to fall in his shock. It exploded everywhere with a poof of white powder. Flour. The guy was stealing flour? That didn’t make sense.

“Take whatever you want. There’s some money in the till.” The maybe-not-a-thief said without turning to face Clint.

“Huh?” Clint asked intelligently. “I’m not stealing. You are.” He accused.

“What? Why would I steal from my own shop?” The guy’s arms started to drop. Still up, but relaxing slightly.

“Oh.” The end of the wood clanked against the ground as he lowered it. Clint cringed at himself and his actions. Now that the initial adrenalin was seeping out of his bloodstream, other explanations were making themselves known. The amazing muffin from yesterday hadn’t been sourced from a bakery, it had been made in house. It was a bakery. And this guy was probably the baker who started before anyone else would normally be awake.

“Sorry.” He apologised to the guy’s back. “I’ll just, um, go. I guess.”

That got the guy moving again. He spun quickly, sending the flour flying again. Electric blue eyes looked out of a face only a few years older than him. Clint’s lines were from being out in the sun and weather for long periods of time, this man’s were from laughter and light. A frission of recognition ran down Clint’s spine. It was the guy from the beginning of the week. Skye’s dad. Monday-man.

Clint allowed the last of the tension to fall from his shoulders. Scrubbing a hand against the back of his neck at the awkward silence that had fallen.

“Right. Bye.” Clint waved and then wanted to smack himself for waving. Dork. Darting out the back door, he dropped the wood and finally started on his delayed run, the hem of his sweats still dusted with flour, hoping that he would be able to outrun the burning in his cheeks.

= + =

Phil blinked at the empty doorway. He had been puttering around the large kitchen for an hour, lost in his own thoughts. The sudden appearance of another person, had been startling, to say the least. The crack of a voice in the dawn quiet had scared him, his heart beating faster than a cornered jack rabbit.

All he could think was: What if Skye came down? If she woke up while he was downstairs starting the day’s work, she often joined him. Perching herself on a chair in the corner, out of the way, and chattering to him. All he had been able to do was pray that she slept through whatever was happening, and if the worst happened, she wasn’t the one to find him. Tasha should still be here. He thought he remembered her saying she was heading out again on Monday.

Phil had carefully not turned around, he had read somewhere that it was less threatening, and if he never saw a face he couldn’t identify them and might be allowed to live.

The absolute confusion of the next minute had been the last thing he had expected. Finally feeling secure enough that he wasn’t being robbed, he turned around and met the eyes of the intruder.

It was the blond he had seen moving in across the street less than a week ago. Clint, Phil suspected his name was. Skye had chatted with him the night before while she was supposed to be doing her homework.

Normally, he would have been with her, tucked into the comfy chair in the back of the shop, but Ella had called in sick and he had to work. All of the regulars had watched her grow up and looked out for her if he was working. In the eight years they had been in the city, he had gathered more of a community, more of a family around them than he had in 18 years in Kingston. If the guy had made one wrong move, there would have been a riot.

Before he had a chance to gather his thoughts, the other man was throwing a bunch of words at him and running back into the darkness of the hallway. The thud of the alley door closing was loud in the stillness. 

Phil had no idea what had just happened. And now he had even more work to do, flour coated half of the kitchen floor and the first batch of muffins in the oven behind him was overcooked and would be better suited to being used as building materials than to eat. With a deep sigh, he got to work.

The second first batch of muffins was out of the oven, the first second batch was in, and the floor was once again spotless when Skye came down. Hair in disarray and pajamas still on, she was an adorable sight. She sidled up beside him and attached herself to his leg. Pressing her face into his time-soft jeans, she very pleasantly wiped her nose on his pants. Snot mixing with the generous layer of flour he was still covered with.

“Skye!” He yelped, trying to gently detangle her so that she couldn’t use him as a hanky again.

“You weren’t upstairs. You should have been upstairs by now.” She propped her chin against his hip and pouted up at him.

He wasn’t going to be able to detangle her, so he gave up trying. “I had an accident with a bag of flour and am running late.” He smiled down at her pouting face, running a gentle hand through her hair to neaten it.

The noise of Linda bustling around the shop serving the few early morning customers looking for a shot of caffeine before their own shifts was the calm background sound of so much of their life.

“Go back upstairs and get dressed. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Instantly her pout transformed into a brilliant smile. He had worked the roster to allow him time to take her to the hairdressers. She had decided last night that she definitely wanted to cut her hair and had spent the rest of the evening bouncing around the apartment when he had told her he could take her the next morning. They spent a good amount of time together, but much of it was in and around the shop. A whole morning just the two of them was precious.

She scampered back upstairs and he pulled the second set of muffins out. The bread still had a bit to go, but Linda could get that out. He waved his own goodbye, trying not to think about that awkward gesture offered by the well-built man who had tried to defend Phil’s livelihood only a few hours earlier.

Skye was ready and waiting by the time he made it upstairs. Sitting on the couch with her book, she was practically vibrating with excitement and her attention was on the door, not her book.

Quickly changing his flour and child mess covered jeans for a clean pair and pulling on a knit sweater he was ready. Collecting his child, they were out the door. As he was locking their door, the one across from them opened.

“Oh, hello Phillip. Skye, kak poživaetje?” Their redheaded neighbor greeted kindly. During the little bit of time she was around, she was always good to Skye. Polite and asking after her school work, she also always remembered anything Skye told her and asked about friends and books that the little girl had mentioned in passing, months before.

“Tasha! U menja vsë khorošo, spasibo.” Skye waved her hello, the Russian rolling easily off her tongue. Most people in their social circle Skye would have tackled them with a hug that had the force of a small truck behind it, but Tasha didn’t like to be touched so Skye just waved.

“Hello, Tasha. How are you?” Phil finished locking his door and waited for her to lock hers as well, so they could walk down together. He wanted to talk to her about replacing the lock on the back door.

It was an easy conversation, the redhead happy to upgrade the security of the building. She promised to call a locksmith if he could be there to greet them, which Phil was happy to do. He was the one asking for it after all. They parted in the alley, Tasha heading south to the university and Phil and Skye north to the little girl’s hairdresser.

After her haircut, the small family continued on to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. They had whiled away countless hours on the three floors of exhibitions and activities. They probably went at least once a month and at this point, Phil could have recreated the whole place from memory, information panels and all.

It was a good morning, happy after the shock and weirdness of that dawn. They were almost back at the café when Clint’s golden hair flashed in the bright sun across the road. Looking over, their eyes met. Clint instantly flushed bright red and sped up, trying to get back into his building without meeting Phil’s eye again.

“Sweetheart, go inside. I’ll be there in a minute.” He pushed Skye lightly towards the door.

“Okay.” She agreed easily, wanting to show Linda her new haircut.

Dodging between the few cars rolling down the street, he got to the building’s entrance at the same time as the other man. Phil placed himself in the doorway so that he couldn’t get past.

“Clint. Please, wait.” The only reason the shorter man stopped was that his arms and hands were loaded with groceries and couldn’t bodily move Phil.

“Look. I’m sorry about this mor…” Clint started before being cut off.

“Thank you.” The two words brought Clint’s embarrassed ramble to an end.

“For what?” His embarrassment morphed into weariness quicker than Phil could follow, obviously waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You thought I was being robbed and rushed in to help. Put your groceries away and come over for a coffee. On the house, as a thank you.” Phil stepped out of the door and back towards the road, he would let the other man decide if he was going to come. He had pushed enough. “I hope to see you later.” Okay, he would push a little bit more.

Phil didn’t think he would ever see the other man again. Convinced the younger man’s embarrassment over the whole thing was going to have him avoiding Phil, his shop, and maybe even the street in between it and his home, he was not expecting to look up from the paperwork he was working on in the corner and see him stepping through the door less than an hour after Phil had tried to bully him into coming.

Unknowingly Clint was setting a bad precedent for himself. He had just told Phil that bullying him into social situations worked and he wasn’t afraid to use that knowledge, just to help get rid of the fearful barrier that Clint had had around himself on both times they had really interacted. It hadn’t been there when Phil had seen him with his friends on Monday and Phil was determined to wear it away between them.

Phil abandoned his paperwork in favor of serving Clint himself. 

“Hi. I’m glad you came. What can I get you?” Phil tried to keep his customer service smile off his face with limited success. Eight years and change, he had been pasting that false grin on his lips and it was muscle memory now.

It must have read as such because Clint’s weariness had only grown. Careful eyes ran over Phil and the other customers before settling on the menu hanging above Phil. The dark chalkboard was covered in neat writing and messy pictures. Skye always managed to steal a few sticks of chalk when he was updating the sign and he never wanted to rub her drawings away. So messy menu it was.

“A black coffee?” Clint asked as if this was a test and he wasn’t sure he had the right answer.

“No problem.” Phil softened his smile, making it more real. He got to work, tamping down the grounds and twisting the portafilter into the group, a steady stream of the darkest coffee he stocked began flowing into the cup. He set up a second mug for himself, he still had a few hours’ worth of payroll and orders to go and would need the boost.

“Come on. There is room for you to work at my table.” Phil nodded down at the pile of papers Clint was clutching.

= + =

Clint stood in the middle of his apartment and couldn’t decide what he wanted to do. A pile of folders had been neatly centered in the middle of his coffee table when he had gotten back from his run. Fucking Fury, breaking in again, he was going to have to get better security or move. He had put off thinking about them by going to do his weekly shop instead. Which had put him in the path of today’s source of embarrassment. The guy hadn’t seemed fazed though. In fact, he had sought Clint out and thanked him for scaring the shit out of him. Who did that?

Now he was trying to decide whether to take him up on the offer of coffee or not. He could stay here, hide from the world, maybe nap, and then go over the files from Fury. Or he could take the offer of a friendship that wasn’t about to become tangled in the web of deceit that all of his work relationships were about to be entwined in. A coffee and the cover of other twenty-somethings doing their own university work for his less benign work sounded good. He had noticed the demographic as he had hurried passed each day on his way to and from work and knew he would blend in fine.

It was only the promise of fresh hot coffee, and not the promise of those bright blue eyes, that had him locking his place up, not that it would do any good if his SO wanted to visit, and no one else seemed inclined to drop in.

The little café was full. Groups of teenagers clustered around one of the sofas, chatting loudly about meth production. Wait, what? Clint did a double-take, paying closer attention to their conversation while the person in front of him ordered. A tv finale? Oh! They were talking about a tv show. What sort of tv were they playing nowadays? He had never been particularly interested in what was on television, having grown up without a set and then not having time in the last few years and he wasn’t regretting the lack of pop culture knowledge if that’s what it consisted of.

The rest of the café patrons was less disturbing for a Federal Agent, however new, to eavesdrop on. It was standard complaints about parents, and teachers, and bosses. A small group was working on a group assignment and Clint put his money on the tiny woman sitting in the corner murdering one of her classmates before the due date from sheer frustration with their incompetence. 

Even distracted by the other people, a part of his attention tracked Phil dodging his way across the shop. He got to the front of the line just as Phil stepped up to serve.

“Hi. I’m glad you came.” Phil greeted him.

He didn’t look it. The smile on his face was entirely false. Pulling his lips wide but not touching his eyes.

“What can I get you?” He continued.

It was too late for Clint to go back to his apartment and hide. He had thought Phil was being friendly earlier, but he must have offered the coffee as some sort of misguided attempt at thanking Clint for not being a psychopath wanting to kill him. Clint watched Phil carefully as he tried to figure out the other man’s motivations. He also re-assessed the other people in the shop. The vibe last night had been that the place was a community unto itself. The free laugher of the other customers supported his original assessment and the childish drawings on the blackboard were endearing and showed more care for the people than for the image.

Phil’s forced cheer suggested that it was Clint who wasn’t truly welcome in that community. But he was there and had been offered free coffee, he wasn’t going to turn that down. “A black coffee?” He figured that was the cheapest option and if the offer had only been extended as a platitude it wouldn’t be a huge imposition.

“No problem,” Phil said with a smile that was more real. 

That had been the right choice, the offer had been a platitude and now it had been accepted and any perceived debt had been paid. Clint could go back to his original plan of avoiding the little shop and everyone involved with it.

Except the coffee was handed over in a have here mug and Phil was talking to him still and waving at a pile of paperwork on the table next to the armchair Clint had sat in the night before.

What the fuck was going on with this guy? He was all over the place. Clint eyed the pile of work suspiciously. Did he want something? Some sort of help with the paperwork? Cause Clint was not going to be any sort of help with that whatsoever.

As he walked away, Phil offered a final small smile. Fuck it, if he did want help Clint could just leave. There wasn’t anything in the space that could stop him, and by habit he had watched everything that went into his cup so there wasn’t a chance the other man had slipped anything into his drink.

Clint wove between the tightly packed tables and sofas. Dodging a flying arm as a girl emphasised her point with a too wide gesture. Avoiding a dropped pencil that was threatening to turn an ankle. It was loud and too much, but the perfect everything. Feeling more like the lounge room of a large family, than a shop full of strangers.

Phil had already returned to a spreadsheet and file when Clint slid into the chair that Skye had been using the night before. He settled his cup on the table and flicked open the first of Fury’s files. Slowly reading the first page, most of his attention was still on his surroundings, and especially the man opposite him. He noticed when a pink tongue darted out to wet a full bottom lip. He saw when downturned blue eyes lightened with having solved a problem and the scratch of his pencil sped up on the page. He didn’t notice when the shopkeep glanced up at him under dark eyelashes. He didn’t see when his drained cup was replaced with a fresh drink. His attention had been pulled into the personnel files of the agents that Fury suspected.

By the end of his second mug of strong coffee, he had mentally crossed off half of Fury’s suspects. The ties to SHIELD were too strong for some of them and the timelines didn’t match up for others. He couldn’t completely discount them, but he was prepared to start with the other half of the list. Sitting back, drawing his mind from the quagmire he had unknowingly walked into, he realised the sounds of the shop had changed. Quietened from the dull roar of mid-afternoon to soft conversation of early evening. Phil was still sat opposite him but the piles of paper had been replaced by a book and Skye had joined them at some point, tucked in between Phil and the arm of his chair, she was absorbed in her own reading, her father’s arm around her shoulders, holding her close. The love between the two was obvious.

Feeling Clint’s eyes on him, Phil glanced up. His face morphed from relaxed resting face to a small pleased smile. Clint blushed. Was his embarrassment ever going to end with this guy?

“Um. Thanks for the coffee. I should get going.” Clint extracted himself from the armchair. Tucking the files under his arm he stood there for a second, at a loss as to what the correct social etiquette was. “Right. Bye.”

“See you later Clint.” Phil’s voice was quiet but full of meaning. Full of promise.

“Bye Clint!” Skye grinned up at him. She was easier to deal with. Kids always were. A kind smile and a bit of consideration was all they really needed or wanted from him.

He grinned back at her. “Bye Skye.”


	7. 2012, Nepal

Lance Corporal Barton was not happy. He was not happy and he was bored. It wasn’t a great combination. He had been in his car and the key literally in the ignition, thirty seconds away from his first rec-leave in three years when his Platoon Sergeant pulled open the driver’s side door.

“Lance Corporal Barton. You are to report to Lieutenant Daly’s office ASAP.” Sergeant turned and left, the door hanging open behind him.

“God damn it.” Clint slammed his hands against the steering wheel. So close. So close to getting out to DC to see his brother for the first time in four and a half years. The door slammed closed behind him. With stiff spine and legs, he marched to the company HQ. Saluting officers that he passed and exchanging greeting nods with other grunts. He liked his job, and he liked the people he worked with. Having spent so long living in a literal circus, the common living of the Marines suited him. He half suspected he wouldn’t know what to do with any significant amount of space to himself. It was a large reason why he had never applied to live off base.

Stopping outside the white washed Command building, Clint took a second to tamp down on the annoyance that was coursing through his veins. Nothing good would come of being riled up in front of the boss. When he enlisted, he had vowed to be there for his country whenever it needed him. He wouldn’t turn his back on that vow.

“Lance Corporal Barton, reporting as ordered. Sir.” He stood ramrod straight, eyes forward, focused on the framed paper above and behind the Lieutenant on the wall.

“At ease Lance Corporal. I know you were meant to go on rec-leave today but a unit in Japan is about to head out on a mission and their sniper had a training accident and will be out of commission. There is a jump leaving in half an hour. Briefing packet will be waiting for you on the plane. Dismissed.” The young officer hardly looked up from his computer while he was talking to Clint. They had never met before and probably would never meet again.

“Sir, yes, sir.” Clint shifted his weight onto his heel and performed a parade perfect about-face. Not that the distracted Lieutenant noticed. Whatever.

He had to run to get to the cages, grab his gear and make it to the plane on time. The cages were on the other end of the base from Command, wouldn’t want the officers to be distracted by the noise of a working military after all. The air command guys waved him on and were pulling up the ramp before he had gotten off it. The changing degree of the ground he was walking on, helped him into the interior of the transport. He had to squeeze between equipment and men who had been packed in like sardines.

Clint didn’t care. He found a berth right up against the front bulkhead, wedged himself in between it and a pallet of something. A Sergeant he didn’t recognise came looking for him once they had lumbered their way to cruising altitude.

“Barton?” He shouted over the engine noise, eyes roving along the rows of identically clothed men.

“That’s me, Sergeant.” He stuck a hand up and waved, unwilling to try and stand.

“Here.” The large man passed over a well-sealed packet and was gone again. He had better things to do than act as a mailman to some random grunt.

“Thanks,” Clint muttered at the man’s retreating back. Sliding his pocket knife under the flap, he pried it open and lost himself in the mission brief, Intel reports and maps that they had provided. Half of the documents were redacted but he had a lot of experience in reading between the lines. 

Everything looked pretty straight forward. A splinter cell from a radicalised far right group out of Bhutan had set up shop in the Nepalese mountains, launching assaults into India and Tibet, mostly on small tribal populations but they had been gaining confidence and only 24 hours ago attacked a police station in India. The Bravo Unit from the 1st Battalion was being sent in to contain or eliminate the threat.

Clint’s job was mostly to watch their backs, be the eyes up high. Make sure their escape routes stayed open and providing any other support as needed. It was a pretty standard job brief for the sniper. He wasn’t thrilled to be sent into a hostile situation with a team he had never met before, but that was the job. 

The first half of the flight was spent reading and re-reading the packet. After memorising the contents he stuffed it into his bag which went behind his back were the other people on the flight couldn’t get to it. Wedged in tight and with nothing else to do, he grabbed the opportunity with both hands and was asleep within minutes of closing his eyes, the rumbling of the engines a comforting vibration at his back and along his legs. 

All he saw of Japan was a night sky. Off-loading from the large transporter and onto a smaller jump plane. Bravo team were already on board and were waiting on him. They were all glowering at him from their seats, no happier to have a ring-in then he was to be one. Awesome.

“Eat something now and then we’ll go over mission prep.” The unit commander, a Sergeant Decker ordered.

“Yes, Sergeant!” The unit chanted, Clint a half syllable behind.

Clint had a few MREs in his pack, choosing a chicken korma that went ok cold. The texture of the food packs was always more than a little off when cold, but they were filling and he had enough experience of an empty stomach through childhood and his teen years that it never put him off. His first months with the Marines, he could always pick out people’s backgrounds by how much they muttered under their breaths about the food. Middle class kids muttered the most, the further down the economic food chain you went, the less the recruit muttered. Clint had always figured that confirmed his long-held belief that he was at the bottom of that chain. He had never complained, the food was hot and plentiful and that was all he really cared about.

“Gather up!” Decker ordered once they had scarfed down their food.

“We’ll be dropping in here.” He stabbed at the map with a stumpy finger. “Using the cover of night…” He started laying out the plan. It wasn’t anything Clint hadn’t done a thousand times and read in the briefing packet a few hours ago. He half tuned out the words, a part of his brain listening and cataloging any changes, and there were a few as there always was. The larger part of his focus was on the people around him, watching for each twitch and look that passed between them. Saw when a private rolled his eyes at his assigned position, and a fellow lance corporal sniggered and elbowed the guy next to him about some stupid double entendre that everyone else ignored. 

They seemed like an okay group of people.

“Ten minutes till drop. Stow anything you don’t need and suit up.” The group broke from their huddle, all of them moving efficiently around the small space. Clint knocked into the guy next to him a few times, each of them used to someone else’s movements. He shrugged it off, but the other LC glowered at him, as if he blamed Clint for their sniper falling off the net in the obstacle course and breaking his arm.

“LINE UP!” The shout came over the rising wind noise as the back ramp lowered. The dark red light painting them all as Renaissance renderings of Dante’s seventh level of hell. “GO GO GO!” The first guy jumped and then the next and the next, the line connecting them all pulling them out of the aircraft in quick succession. Clint was the fourth out and, holding his body in a rigid line, followed the first three. Angling himself slightly this way and that to keep in line. Plummeting headfirst towards towering peaks and deep troughs. If any of them missed the only landing site, they would quickly meet an uncomfortable end.

They all knew what they were doing and one by one they touched down on the little patch of dirt, moving out of the way of the guy behind them. Once they were all on solid ground, the silk of their parachutes was bundled up and dropped into a ravine. They wouldn’t need them again and were just another weight to carry.

Hand signals that to anyone else would have been lost in the gloom silently directed the team. Clint caught all of them, not all of them were ones he was meant to see. A sliver of ice ran down his spine. Something wasn’t right. He caught his paranoia in a tight grip, it wasn’t usual, but it wasn’t unheard of for a guy or two within a team to have a mission within a mission. That’s probably whatever it was, why the Unit commander wanted an extra eye kept on their new sniper. On Clint.

With the dust still settling from their landings, they were moving. In seconds disappearing into the low brush and rocky outcrops, creeping across a deserted, desert landscape. Clint moved higher than the others, above the scant tree line. The position made him more visible, but it also allowed him to see further. The only movement was from his own team. Nothing else stirred the air.

It took two hours to slide between unseen places for the team to get to the mouth of the cave system the group they were hunting was using. The five of them settled in to wait. Spread around the opening, using what they could find for cover. Three am was their go time. The few men still awake would be starting to doze in the cool mountain air, but no one else would be getting up yet.

A single, out of place beep signaled the start of the assault. Four shadows detached themselves from deeper wells of inky blackness. Clint stayed where he was. Rifle pressed up against his shoulder and eye. He watched as the shadows that were his team mates slunk up behind the two sentries, sharp blades glinted dully for a second in the weak moonlight before their light was quenched by dark venous blood. 

Two down, many more to go.

With the sentries down, Clint picked up his rifle and moved closer. The tunnels switched back on themselves quickly and repeatedly. God he wished he had his bow. Guns were more of a handicap in such close quarters, a shot going off target by millimeters could have a ricochet hitting one of his own people, an arrow wouldn’t have that problem, but he would be laughed out of the Corp for suggesting it.

He got to the cave entrance just in time to shoot a man trying to sneak up on one of his teammates, he couldn’t remember his name it might have started with H or maybe J. Whatever, the kid wasn’t going to die today.

They fought through sunrise. The thick cave walls kept the newborn light out. The team was still swathed in darkness. There wasn’t much resistance, but the multi-chambered system had so many switch-backs and dead-end off-shoots that it was taking the small team hours to clear it. The midday sun was beating mercilessly down on the mountains, bouncing of snow and bare rock, when they finally emerged from the darkness. They had passed through the mountain, looking at a completely different landscape from the one they had crept across the night before. It was done.

Clint sagged against one of the rough walls, exhausted. He had hardly seen the inside of his own eyelids in the last forty-eight hours. Pure adrenaline and knowing they were going to be on the move again any second were the only things keeping him from falling into a zombie-like stupor.

A weak, whining, ‘no’ slipped from between his lips when he saw half of the team turning back into the cave system. That shit went on forever. If they had to trek back through the congealing blood of the dead before getting to ex-fil, he was going to cry. Getting old blood out of his boot treads was a bitch and a half. 

“Guard the exit, Barton.” Decker ordered.

“Sergeant.” He straightened at the order and moved so that he could see out across the mountains.

Decker and the Private he had kept from having his head removed hours earlier, disappeared down the tunnels in pursuit of the other two. Apparently there was a bigger mission here, and he was the only one not read in on it. He didn’t resent the exclusion. The tingle from the night before was back and stronger. This team, whatever they were doing, he didn’t want any part of it.

The only thing moving outside the cave was the sun. As he stood there, watching the timeless view, the shadows inched fifteen degrees across the landscape. Dead air was all that was behind him. Knowing there were four people back there that he couldn’t see, and didn’t trust was making his skin crawl. He was confident that he would hear them coming, the last bottleneck of the cave twisted tight enough that they wouldn’t be able to just shoot him in the back, but having to be wary of the people he should have been able to trust was exhausting.

Rising pressure in his ears was his first warning that things were going wrong. The pressure in his ears was joined by a weight on his chest, making it a struggle to breathe and then a low buzzing. The sound was right at the bottom of his hearing, almost more of a vibration in his chest than an actual sound. Between one heartbeat and the next, the sound burst into full hearing range. A multi-tonal buzzing-scream. 

A flight of little drab brown birds burst from the scrub further down the slope. They were the only thing to move at the sound that was getting louder in bursts. Pausing for one more second, watching the still mountains, Clint finally turned back into the darkness of the caves.

He hadn’t heard from any of the team, but under the racket, he probably wouldn’t hear if they tried to contact him. Chamber after chamber was empty of life. The dead had been moved from where they had fallen, most of them now lay against the walls. Clint couldn’t figure out why they had done that, each team had their own way of doing things, but moving the bodies didn’t make sense. They weren’t going to install anyone here, and if they had been going to, the dead would have had to be moved out completely not just to the side of the tunnels. There wasn’t anything big enough to require hazard-free movement either. 

The first clue for what they were doing came in the third chamber. The body of a man Clint had killed was now laying against the wall, his shirt gaping open. When he had shot the guy, his shirt had been closed with a neat line of fucking gold buttons. Now the side of his shirt was ragged and missing a good inch of fabric.

Motherfuckers.

They were looting the dead. His steps turned from careful to forceful. Storming through two more chambers he found them. The four men were spread across the open space. It was the largest chamber in the system, boxes and canvas wrapped objects were stacked against the walls. The group had been using it as a storage space. Decker was arm deep in one hip-high box, the other LC was crouched over one body and the private Clint had saved over another. The final Private Olonga, Clint remembered in a flash, was standing in the middle of the chamber, a metal ball held in front of him. Clint took all of it in in a second. 

The sound was almost unbearable. It was still growing in volume and he couldn’t hear anything else, not even the blood pulsing in his ears. The ball Olonga was holding pulsed with energy, that’s where the noise was coming from. Each time it pulsed the sound grew.

Clint stepped forward, intending to make him drop it. Crossing the threshold, the sound stopped. Ears ringing in the sudden silence, he tried to continue forward. He couldn’t. Not a single muscle was obeying him. He couldn’t tip backward out of the room. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t blink.

He hadn’t watched the others long enough to realise they weren’t moving. It was a tiny thing to miss, but it was unacceptable. He saw everything. He was Hawkeye. If he missed this, what else had he missed? What would he miss in the future?

The part of his brain that was panicking was also trying to hyperventilate. No oxygen was coming. With no natural light or movement to tell him how long he had been there, he could have only been stuck for a second or for hours, but the lack of air wasn’t affecting him. His mind wasn’t becoming sluggish with oxygen deprivation. The tips of his fingers, all that he could see of himself, were still pink with life. His eyes weren’t even drying out.

A pebble skittering across the floor and being caught by whatever had caught Clint and the team was the first hint that this whole FUBAR situation was about to get worse. Directly across from Clint, coming from the same direction the team had originally come from, a person wrapped in the ochre-colored cotton of the locals stopped in the mouth to the chamber. An AK-47 was held loosely in his hands. 

He met Clint’s eyes, calmly raised the rifle and shot the crouched LC in the head. What happened next would feature in every nightmare Clint had for the rest of his life. The bullet got through the field holding them still. The kneeling LC wouldn’t have seen it coming, his head turned well away from the danger. The bullet hit him just behind and below his right ear, and came out the left side of his underjaw, plowing through the man’s skull slowed the little piece of metal enough that the field finally caught it. Too late. Blood and grey matter followed the metal and was caught. The viscera hung suspended in the edge of Clint’s vision.

A second man stepped up beside the first, dressed in Western black fatigues but his dark skin and eyes suggested that he came from the area. The first man turned his weapon on the private that Clint’s couldn’t remember the name of. The boy’s blood joined the LC, hanging, frozen as a gruesome testament to humanity’s cruelty. The second swung the pistol he was holding up and fired at Sergeant Decker.

Another bullet took out Private Olonga. Clint was the only one still alive. Visceral glee was the only emotion on the other two men’s faces, they were enjoying torturing Clint by making him watch the slaughter when he couldn’t do anything but stand there and wait for the bullet that would end it all. 

If he could have closed his eyes he would have. But he couldn’t. He was left to stare down the men that were going to kill him, hoping that all of his hatred and promises to haunt them forever showed in his eyes. The bullet never came. Two shots sped past him, close enough that they singed his left ear as they moved past him. One took the ochre guy centre mass, the other one downing the black-clad man with a shot just below the guy’s right eye.

Whoever was behind him had saved his life, but were they about to put a bullet in his back? Take out the threats first and then finish off the guy that couldn’t even turn around and look at you.

A heavy weight slammed into his back. They had fucking shot him! Oh god, he had been shot in the back, just over the heart, and he was still conscious. He couldn’t say he was still breathing because he wasn’t, but he was still aware. Was this had he was going to spend the rest of eternity? Frozen and looking at the suspended insides of four men’s heads? Maybe, eventually, the batteries in their torches would fail and he would be plunged into darkness until the world ended.

He was trying to force his brain into that still place he settled into when spending long days in a perch waiting for a target. Aware, awake, but not truly taking in what was around him. A person could ignore a lot in that floating, disconnected place. A tug on his back broke his concentration. He would have scowled with annoyance if his facial muscles could move. A second tug kept him in the present, unable to drift away from the gory scene that was burning its way into his retinas. He was going to see grey matter when he blinked, like the worst sunspot in history.

The third tug was the hardest of them. It moved him. Only a fraction of an inch, but he moved. The next tug had him pulled out of the grips of whatever had been holding him. Sprawled out on his back, he decided that blinking was the best thing ever and did it a few more times just because he could. He lay in the dirt just blinking up at the uneven roof. And that fucking awful noise was back.

His view was rudely interrupted by first one face and then another. A black man with an eyepatch made out of what Clint thought might be Kevlar, and a woman with black hair with a red streak on either side that was tied back in a severe bun.

He didn’t recognise either of them, but they sure as shit weren’t military. They were dressed like the black pajama brigade that ‘didn’t exist’ in the Army and Air force, their clothes lacked the usual identifying patches. No name tags, no country flags, nothing to give Clint a hint as to who they were.

“What’s your status, Lance Corporal Barton?” Eyepatch asked, his proximity the only reason Clint could hear him. The man’s voice reminded Clint of a rockslide, rough and rumble, with a power behind it that couldn’t be denied.

“Uhh.” Was his intelligent answer.

Chips of rock slicing into his rescuer’s cheek had them all turning. The woman swore low and comprehensively. The man offered Clint a hand up without looking at him. Across the tableau of horror, the two newly downed terrorists, cause that’s what they were part of Clint’s brain told him, had been replaced by more of the splinter group. The Marines hadn’t gotten them all before his team had started looting.

Both groups were hampered by the upright corpses that had been Clint’s team, but the shooting started again. Eyepatch crouched on one side of the tunnel, red-streaks on the other while Clint laid himself back down, took up a prone firing position and started picking the enemy off. A man dropped each time he caressed the trigger. The blare of overlapping gunfire from two different types of weapons was enough to drown out the deafening scream. 

For ten seconds, they laid down continuous fire that dropped everyone before they were able to get a single, accurate shot off at the three. The couple of shots they put downrange went wide, hitting the walls of the cave or going into the bodies of Marines, sending more blood and viscera to hang motionless. Clint shot a man clean through the heart and then removed his finger from the trigger. There was no one left to shoot and he wasn’t going to waste ammunition just to keep making noise. There was enough of it without his help.

Red-streaks was the next to stop, Eyepatch let off one more shot at the empty space before his pistol stuttered to a halt as well. Over his head, their hands flicked furiously. He recognised some of the signs but it wasn’t standard Military hand signals. With a nod, their silent discussion broke off. Red-streaks turned around and set herself up to watch their backs, just in case they hadn’t got them all. Eyepatch changed to standard hand signals and signed for Clint to keep eyes forward. Beside him, the large man was fiddling with a tube and grapple system that didn’t look like it had ever seen the inside of a DARPA lab. 

Eyepatch brought the contraption to his shoulder, settled his stance, lined up his shot and fired. It wasn’t a grapple, it was some sort of claw attached to a long rope. Flying true and with enough velocity to get through whatever had caught Clint, the teeth of the claw closed around the metal orb that the body that used to be Olonga was still holding. Eyepatch wrapped his end of the rope around his hand a couple of times and with his whole body, tugged. The orb wobbled but stayed where it was.

Eyepatch frowned, dug his feet in and threw himself backward. The rope snapped taut. The force field or whatever it was, gave up and released the metal ball, sending it flying into the tunnel wall. The impact was accompanied by the scratch of metal on rock and then the metallic screech of the metal snapping. Two pieces of metal clanked dully to the floor.

The screaming had stopped and in front of Clint, the bodies, bullets, and blood that he spent more time looking at than he ever wanted to look at anything ever again, slowly sagged to the floor. Moving through invisible molasses instead of being frozen in place. 

Eyepatch picked himself up off the floor and dusted off his clothes. “Hand, call in the clean-up crew. Barton, you’ll be with us for debrief, we’ll let the Corp know where you are.” 

With the force field shut down, the next half an hour was a flurry of movement. Red-streaks, apparently called Hand, and Eyepatch, Johnson he learned, moved around each other fluidly. Hand barking into a radio that she appeared from nowhere and Johnson maneuvering the metal orb into a dull metal case without touching the thing. Then there were other people. All of them dressed in the same black pajamas as his rescuers. They swarmed around where Clint leant against one of the tunnel walls.

“Come on.” Hand put a hand on his elbow and steered him through the chaos of the clean-up crew.

She led him blinking into the dusk sun. More than twelve hours had passed since his team had breached the system. How could so much change in half a day?

Seeing that he wasn’t quite with it, she led him into the back of a small jet, the likes of which he had never seen before. Inside she pointed him to a seat close to the ramp and left him there. Johnson joined them a while later, long enough that the sun had completely set and anyone but Clint wouldn’t have been able to see anything in the deep dark of a night with heavy clouds.

The jet was almost silent after the roar of noise that had been most of his day. The flight wasn’t long, almost as soon as they leveled out, they were descending again. Clint had no idea where they were going or who he was going with. But two of the three people in the plane with him had saved his life so he wasn’t too worried about asking right now.

The roar of the engines changed pitch, purring. Jolting slightly, the little aircraft touched down. There had been no slow decline and breaking along a runway, nor the heavy jolt of a landing mechanism on the shorter runway of a ‘carrier. The jet had made a vertical descent, more like a helicopter than a plane. It explained how these people had landed it in the mountains. He had been too turned around when he had first seen it to think about the mechanics of it, but the flight had given his brain a chance to reset and start working again.

Beside him, the ramp started to lower. Stepping out, he found himself on the roof of a skyscraper looking out over a city he had only seen in movies and on postcards. The bright lights of Singapore shone, a beacon of civilisation in the dark forest of the rest of the little country. Johnson and Hand, and Clint did not believe those were their real names, exited the plane and bracketed him as they went inside, the backwash of the plane taking off trying to push Clint off his feet just before the door shut behind him. 

Darkness swallowed them. 

The other two stopped walking, waiting for their eyes to adjust, Clint had seen enough before the light had been shut out by the heavy metal door and was able to continue moving. He was three steps in by the time his night vision had kicked in, faster than most people. He was down the single flight of stairs and almost had the door picked when the other two joined him.

“Do you mind?” Hand asked from directly behind him.

“Nope.” He twisted the last pick another half degree and the door swung open.

“Come on hotshot.” Johnson’s rumbling voice sounded slightly brighter. Was the scary man smiling at him?

Clint grinned up at the taller man when he stood and stepped through the doorway. “It’s Hawkeye.”

Johnson just shook his head in response, the tiniest hint of laugh lines crinkling around his one eye. Hand’s glare didn’t move an inch. As they stepped up beside him, Hand wrapped a hand, (Was that a pun? Clint didn’t think it was but mentally sniggered anyway.) around his elbow. Tight enough that he wasn’t going to wander off on them again.

They had the elevator to themselves for the first three levels they dropped, then a tired-looking middle-aged man joined them, the newcomer ran his eyes over Clint and his dirt and blood-encrusted uniform, eyes catching on the US Marines patch and turned away, disinterested. On the next level, the besuited man got off and they were joined by a pair in the same uniform that Johnson and Hand were in. For another ten levels, the number of people increased and decreased in the little car. Every single person stopped talking when they saw Clint standing in the corner of the metal box. He wasn’t able to pick up much from the little he did hear. Snatches of inter-office gossip, apparently someone named Timons had set fire to the floor 15 kitchen again, and references to things he could only assume were mission code names, unless Operation: Icicle was someone’s plans for an April’s Fools prank.

They had dropped 15 floors, judging from the height they had been looking down on the city from, they weren’t even halfway down the building’s considerable height. A dull, grey foyer, gave way to a dull, grey hallway, which gave way to a dull, grey room. A metal table with three seats, one on one side and two on the other, was the only furniture. They pushed him at the single chair and settled themselves in the opposite. Awesome, debrief. Clint pulled a purely mental face of disgust. Normally, he was able to hide in the back on a debrief, letting everyone else talk. He wasn’t going to be able to hide here.

Four hours later, it had been as bad as he had thought it was going to be. The two people, agents he thought, had picked apart every little decision and observation he had made over the 18 hour period he had been in Nepal. They asked about his thoughts on the team he had been assigned to and their decisions. It was uncomfortable and made his skin crawl. He spent all of his time watching other people with a focus that most people found uncomfortable - he didn’t appreciate having that turned on him. He spent so much time in the shadows, being unseen saved his and other lives, to be so seen went against all of the training he had undergone in the last four years. It was giving him flashbacks to Carson’s, but on the nights when he had performed for a bored or angry crowd, it hadn’t happened often but there were a few times and it was a feeling he wasn’t likely to forget. 

“We’ll get in touch if we have any more questions.” Agent Johnson told him as they were loading him onto a plane back to Camp Lejeune, and his own unit. He didn’t hold out much hope of getting up to DC to see Barney. His unit was scheduled for redeployment in just over a week and that would quickly be eaten up by the end of this clusterfuck and admin and prep for his actual assignment. Awesome.

= + =

The ramp lowered, letting him out into the cool late winter night. His Gunny was waiting at the end of the ramp. The man’s shoulders drooped with the weight of the world.

“Gunny?” Clint stepped down onto the dark asphalt of the landing strip.

“I’m sorry, son.” For once, the imposing man actually sounded like he meant it. “You’ve been ordered to present yourself at the Brig.”

“What? Why?” Clint stopped just out of grabbing range. Tipping back onto his heels. If he had any hope of making it off base, he would have taken it. Things had gone sideways in a way that he couldn’t see. It was the inability to see what was coming that was hitting his flight response, not whatever his boss was about to say.

“You can’t run from this.” Gunny saw the tiny movement. “They won’t ever stop looking. It’s better to face it head on. You didn’t do it, you’ll be fine.”

He rocked back onto his toes. This was bad. Together, they crossed the base in silence. It was only once the brig, which was little more than a concrete block, came into view that Clint broke the silence. “What am I being accused of?” He murmured, barely audible over the sound of their boots on the sidewalk.

“I shouldn’t…” Gunny started.

“Please. Just, I won’t run. But please, I need to know.” He broke in, it was rude but he needed to know what he was facing behind that thick metal door.

“Four counts manslaughter, one count misbehavior before the enemy.” Gunny gave in. He had been Clint’s boss for the last few years, they had moved through the depths of hell together. He would give the younger man any advantage he could. None of his people were going to go in blind if he could help it.

Clint blanched. Manslaughter? They thought he had killed that unit, or at the very least gotten them killed. The metal door clanked shut heavily behind him. 

The only light in the building was from bare bulbs embedded in a ceiling too high for anyone to reach unaided. Two MPs were at a guard desk directly in front of the door, a cage door behind them. Gunny left him there, slipping back out the door into the cool night air.

With as few words as possible, they checked him in and then led him through the barred door, each door they passed through another layer of locks and metal between him and freedom.

He was the only prisoner in the brig. Stripping him and getting him into a grey jumpsuit only took them a few minutes and then he was shoved none-too-gently into a cell. The click of the bolt sliding into place was loud. He turned and watched the bare metal door for a minute, when no one came back, he turned his attention to the rest of the room. Untreated concrete walls and floor. A metal bunk bolted to the floor with a thin mattress and an even thinner blanket. The toilet and sink in the corner looked like they were held together by rust and not much else. That was it. A single light bulb was the only source of light on the miserable room. 

It was a cold night. Curled up under the threadbare material, he was shivering. With no outside light source, the minutes and hours passed in a slow crawl of breathe in and breathe out, of thoughts whirling through his head. He and the agents, of an agency he couldn’t even name, were the only ones still alive that knew what had happened in that cave. Whoever was accusing him of getting that team killed, had no idea what they were talking about. But he had no way of proving that, no way of contacting the people that could help him prove it.

The rattling of a key in the lock was his first indication that morning had come. He was up and stood in the middle of the room. The door swung open, a different MP from the two the night before and a Lieutenant he didn’t recognise were on the other side.

“Turn around Lance Corporal.” The MP ordered. 

The click of the metal around his wrists sounded like the key being thrown away. The midday sun beat down on them when they left the concrete building. He had been in that little box, alone and shivering for more than half a day. They led him directly across the road, into a small office building that Clint had never paid much attention to in the few short times he had been Stateside.

Halfway down the first corridor, the lieutenant let them into a small office, desk overflowing with papers and bookshelves stuffed to bursting with books.

“Thank you, Corporal.” The lieutenant nodded at Clint’s bound wrists.

“Sir.” She unlocked the cold metal and made herself scarce, pulling the door carefully closed behind her.

“Please sit Lance Corporal.” The officer waved at the guest chair that had slightly less paper on it than the other. “I’m Lieutenant Lee, I’ll be your council during any proceedings.”

“Sir.” Clint murmured a soft acknowledgment at his knees.

“The prosecution has enough to court-martial. The Commander Review will be held in two days. Is there anything I need to know?” Lee wasn’t paying any attention to Clint, his eyes were fastened on the pile of papers in the middle of his desk, more interested in reading whatever story the officials had been told than in what Clint had to say on the matter.

“Does it matter?” He did what he could to keep the bitterness out of his voice and the glare from his face, but he wasn’t particularly successful so kept his eyes downturned.

“Lance Corporal!” That got his attention. The glare he leveled at Clint was only half as bad as the one Trickshot used to use and Clint stood unmoving under its focus. “If there is anything that could help me in your defense, I need to know about it. Let’s avoid adding an Article 134 to this mess, shall we?” 

“Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir.” That time, Clint kept all emotion out of his voice. It came out flat and dead instead.

“Good.”

Lee began picking through the case against him, the charges and the evidence. It took an age. Most of it went in one ear and out the other. Most of it was bullshit anyway. They, whoever they were, said he had shot his whole team when they had caught him looting the dead. It didn’t make sense, he had shot all of them but come out unscathed? And what about where he had gone after and how he had gotten home? The lieutenant seemed quite prepared to ignore the inconsistencies.

Like the good little soldier, he yes sir’d and no sir’d in all the right places. Eventually, the corporal came back, locked him into the cuffs again and took him back to his little cell. A sandwich and two bottles of water were waiting on his cot.

He quickly ate and then curled back up, another night of shivering to look forward to. For the next two days his time settled into a pattern of sorts. A bowl of porridge in the morning, a sandwich at midday, and a lukewarm plate of dinner in the evening, was the most contact he had with the outside world. With no way of finding out who was driving the case against him, he had nothing to occupy himself with other than turning the mission over and over in his mind. Looking for anything he could have done differently. 

Rattling at the door signalled the arrival of his midday wilted lettuce sandwich. It wasn’t his sandwich. Agent Hand was the one to step through his doorway. He hadn’t expected to see either of the Agents again, and if he had been asked to choose one he would see again, Johnson would definitely have been his choice.

“Agent Hand ma’am.” It was the first time since he had left her and Johnson’s company that he had actually wanted to be polite to someone. As the days had passed, the anger that sat hot in his gut had grown until his whole body burnt with it.

“Mr. Barton.” The exclusion of his rank was telling. “You are free to go. The charges have been dropped and you have been given an honourable discharge.” She handed him a thick sheaf of papers, twisted a half turn, the door no longer blocked. 

Having wanted to get out that door for days, now he couldn’t take the three steps that would see him out. Where would he go? Would Barney take him in? They had only just started talking again after years of silence. Could any of his friends from Carson’s? Most of them had moved on, built lives for themselves. Could he interfere on that?

“Move it, Barton.” Hand’s patience was wearing thin.

Half certain that she would lock him back in if he kept her waiting, he jumped forward, crossing the three steps in two. Outside in the red light of dusk, his truck was sitting parked with the keys in the ignition. The message was clear, Clint wasn’t welcome here.

“Thank you, Agent Hand.” He shook her hand and then got in his car. Driving out of the Camp, he pointed his car north, towards the only family he had and crossed his fingers.


	8. Nov 2013 - Jan 2014, New York

The first week at SHIELD and living in Brooklyn, set the tone for the next few months. Clint walking on eggshells and being looked down on by most of the agents he was meant to work with. Ingratiating himself to those he thought might be the one passing information into the hands of their enemy. Staying away from those he didn’t suspect but thought he would one day like to be friends with. When the underhandedness of it all got too much, he took to the vents and the ceiling beams and the rooves of the city. Anywhere high, and away from those he couldn’t join.

Hours when he should have been at his desk, reading personnel files of people he would be working with in future or mission histories or whatever, he slithered into the dust-filled metal tunnels and started mapping the internal structures of the large building. He listened as two scientists in the Physics department worked on Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness. Looking it up afterward he figured they probably weren’t meant to be working on it during office hours, but it wasn’t hurting anyone, and when he needed the background noise of friendly competition he could often be found, or not, lying in the vent above their office listening and doing his paperwork.

He also used the hidden highway to stalk a few of the people most strongly suspected. Agent Garrett, a level seven handler that seemed to be living a little too large for a government salary. Agent Carin, an analyst with fingers in every pie that had had a leak and a few more. Doctor Foster a biochemist who had a blog that had become more openly cynical in the last eighteen months. And Doctor Keller, a psychologist who had access to the files of all of her patients.

For months nothing he managed to overhear helped to narrow it down. It was depressing and lonely work. Clint hadn’t seen Marcus after that first Friday in his apartment. A mission gone sideways in somewhere above Clint’s clearance, had the older agent bugging out for who knows how long.

His only sort of friend at SHIELD was the young woman from his first Friday. Her name was Jemma Simmons and she had only arrived on base a week before him. Painfully shy, and having lost her only friend from training when he was sent to the engineers in DC, it took her three weeks to say anything more than a quiet hello to him. By the end of his fourth week in New York, he would have trusted her with his life. Her quiet competence and friendly spirit drawing him in. He hoped she felt the same way and would remember the slow build to friendship when his mission was done.

Monday to Thursday he spent a few hours after work at a civilian gym, not wanting to be surrounded by agents he didn’t trust for any longer than he had to be. Friday night was spent at the cafe. Reading a book across from Skye if Phil was working, or across from them both if he wasn’t. They rarely talked, each of them done in after a long week. Saturdays were errands and then an afternoon of the paperwork he couldn’t do at work and talking to Phil as he slogged through his own papers. Slowly getting to know each other, finding common ground in tragic backstories, not that either of them shared the extent of the damage done to them by people they should have been able to trust.

The first break in routine was on the first Monday in January. Clint arrived home from the gym, tired and sweaty, and he was ready for a shower some food and bed. Seeing the dim light of his bedside lamp under the door, he knew it wasn’t to be. His expectation of finding his mostly hands-off SO on the other side was met. Fury was once again sat inside his locked apartment, lounging in his armchair a mug of coffee half-drunk on the table in front of him. He had been waiting for a while.

“Sir.” Clint greeted him, on his way past. He needed to hydrate after the extra long workout he had put his body through that evening.

“Your intel was good.” was Fury’s reply when Clint finally dropped onto the couch. “Another mission was blown, Cyprus. The guys who picked up our agent thought it was Gomez not Lopez. The actual Gomez was fine in Canada.”

In Clint’s second week, they had identified two missions that for one reason or another, their suspects had only access to one of the two. They had swapped some of the details. Not for the people going in but for the higher level agents that didn’t have a direct hand in the operations. Then they waited to see which, if any, mission had been affected. In one move, their suspect pool had been cut from over seventy, to just over forty. It was still a daunting number, but it was a start. It also cut out Carin and Doctor Keller of the four Clint had mentally flagged as most likely.

Clint sunk further into the soft piece of furniture. “Thank fuck.” He sighed. Maybe this whole thing would be over sooner rather than later and he would actually have a hope of making some sort of life for himself with SHIELD.

Fury waved at the pile of folders next to his foot. “How do we cut it down further?”

“R & D are working on a new tranquilizer.” Clint started but was cut off by Fury.

“How do you know that?” He asked sharply. “That’s a good three levels about your current security clearance.”

“I made a friend.” Clint said defensively. “I don’t think she realised I could hear and understand what she was muttering about at lunch the other day.” Then waved the explanation away. “That’s not the point. The mole is leaking tech also right? What if we add a different chemical marker to the software version of the tranquilizer that each area has access to. That should cut the pool further.”

“I can swap a few files Barton. But I’m not a magician. How the fuck would we manage that? Unless you have been keeping a doctorate in chemical engineering laying around in a jacket somewhere.” Fury snarked. If he wanted harebrained schemes he would have talked to himself.

“I know someone who could help.” Clint hedged, hoping it would be enough.

It wasn’t.

“And this person is just going to start fucking with SHIELD tech because you asked? Are you bribing, blackmailing, or fucking them?” The lack of alliteration was disappointing but there wasn’t much for it.

“If I can bring her in, I think she will do it because she is a good person. Oh, and banging.”

“What?” The final suggestion threw Fury out of the flow of the conversation. 

“Instead of fucking, banging.” Clint shrugged.

“Yes, if I wanted to sound like a cartoon super villain.” Fury scowled at him, wondering when exactly he lost control of the discussion.

After that he was silent for a long time. Thinking the actual suggestion over. Balancing the give and take of bringing another person into the fold. “Ok. Don’t do it at SHIELD. Take them somewhere else. I don’t want to know where or when. Only tell them there is a leak, no details. Don’t tell them who we suspect, don’t tell them about me, or the blown covers. And I don’t want to know who they are.” With the beginnings of a plan in place, he swept out of the apartment. 

Clint levered himself off the couch. The sweat had dried on his skin, sticking his clothes and the fabric of the couch, making his skin itchy. A shower and then he would see if Jemma wanted to grab a coffee.

Waiting for the young woman to answer her phone, he puttered around the kitchen, throwing a frozen dinner into the microwave and opening a beer.

“Hello?” Jemma finally answered the phone.

“Hey, Jemma. It’s Clint.” 

“Oh, Hello! How are you?” She sounded more focused but also more confused. She had never given him her number, but accepted that he could get it from SHIELD without any difficulty, but was likely lost as to why he would want to.

“I’m good. I was wondering if you wanted to get a drink?” He pulled the steaming plastic dish from his microwave when it beeped. He wasn’t going to take Fury’s suggestion of taking her to Pekar, he didn’t want to have the only good part of his life colliding with the mess that was the rest of it.

“A drink? I, um, I’m sorry Clint but I’m not interested in you. I, um..” She stumbled over her words, trying to let him down easy.

“No. I wasn’t. Oh god.” He cut in before stuttering to a stop himself. He expanded his lungs and then pushed every ounce of air from them, hitting a mental reset. “I wasn’t trying to ask you out. Not that there's anything wrong with you. I would completely ask you out. I just wasn’t. I don’t have any friends in New York and you don’t either. I just. I don’t know. I was just trying to make friends.” It was the most awkward words to have ever come out of his mouth.

“Oh. Ok. A drink sounds good. What were you thinking?” With the intent behind the offer cleared up, she sounded on board with growing their friendship.

“There’s a bar called Luke’s in the East Village?.” He started.

“I’ve not been to Hell’s Kitchen.” She almost apologised for not knowing it, he could hear it in her voice though.

“It’s on Avenue B. How about Friday? Say 7?” He tried to play it off as nonchalantly as possible. A hand of friendship, no strings attached. Apparently he succeeded.

“Sounds good.” The smile in her voice sounded genuine. He suspected she was as lonely as he had been and that she didn’t have a Phil and Skye to fill that void for her.

He didn’t like giving up a Friday night with Phil and Skye, but the need to wrap the hunt up was pressing on him.

= + =

Tuesday morning, Clint got sent on his first mission since arriving at SHIELD HQ. All of the months since arriving at HQ had been eaten up by training, induction lectures, and once actually cleared, a lack of missions that needed his particular skill set. He had barely stepped foot through the front door when Sitwell, no warmer than he was on Clint’s firs day, was pushing him onto a quinjet for a quick jump across the border to Montreal. Five other people were inside the little plane. Aside from the pilot, he only recognised two of the occupants. Garret and one of his sycophantic trainees, Ward. For his first mission after Nepal almost a year ago, the team make up was less than ideal. There wasn’t going to be any margin of error on whatever the mission was.

The jet was barely in the air before Garrett was passing out their information packets. They each got different information, depending on their roles. Clint’s was a map with two red dots, his nest and the meeting point, marked and a flip book of photos. The contact, and any possible bad actors in the area or interested in the exchange.

The actual mission went like clockwork. Joseph, the contact, turned up when and where he said he would, the information was collected and the team were back in US airspace in less than 48 hours. It should have been a dream. Instead by the time they were touching down in New York, Clint was exhausted. He hadn’t slept even when he was off watch, and stepping off the jet his eyes were ready to bug out of his head and his hands were starting to shake from exhaustion. Fury took one look at him and ordered him home.

His exact words had been. “Go the fuck home and sleep Barton. Debrief 0830 tomorrow, if you’re late I’ll shoot you.”

It wasn’t an order he was going to argue with.

By the time he stumbled through his front door it was late Wednesday afternoon. He was in bed, dead to the world before sunset.

Thursday was eaten by debriefs for the trip to Montreal, and planning meetings for a longer intel mission that came out of the meet he had been the eyes up high for in the French Canadian city. Late Thursday night, Fury finally dismissed him, a knowing spark in his eye.

“Take tomorrow. Be back first thing Monday.” His SO ordered as Clint shuffled out of the bland conference room into the equally bland corridor. Deserted with the late hour, Clint took the chance and threw the bird over his shoulder startling a laugh from the older man.

= + =

Waking up later than usual on Friday morning, he quickly realised the last thing he wanted with that night’s meeting looming was a day free. On one hand, he knew there was no other option to move forward with the hunt other than to bring Jemma in, meaning there was no point in stressing about it. She would either agree and they would be in business, or she wouldn’t and he would be back in a bring but for good this time. On the other, it gave his brain time to run through contingencies that he knew were insane but that he couldn’t stop considering. What if Jemma was dirty?

Thoroughly annoyed with himself, Jemma dirty, as if, he threw his covers off and stumbled his way into the kitchen. As the coffee dripped into his mug, he watched snow lazily float past his window. It must have been coming down for a while as there was more than two inches on the ground

Clint moved away from the window as the sun strengthened. The light bouncing off the fresh snow was strong and hurt to look at. He a whole day to fill before Jemma would be at Luke’s. The paperwork from Montreal and the mole hunt were mocking him from his small kitchen table. He wouldn’t accomplish anything by trying to work on those. Stalking through his two rooms to find something to do, the pile of laundry in the bathroom guilted him into taking a load down to the laundry room. 

Once started, the toilet was his next method of distraction. Wielding bleach and a brush he had it sparkling, then he attacked the shower and the sink after. By the time the first load of laundry was ready to be moved into the dryer, the bathroom was cleaner than it had been when he moved in. 

A second load went in and his sheets were changed. He had thrown the dirty sheets into his bedroom door as he stripped them, looking down at them he groaned when he realised he had made more laundry for himself. His thousand year old vacuum rumbled to life and sputtered as he pushed it around the hardwood and across the rugs of his living space. Downstairs to put the second load into the dryer and his towels into one washing machine and his sheets into another. He controlled every machine in the basement. 

He pressed the start button on his little dishwasher drawer thing at the same time the alarm on his phone went off. It was his “you need to start getting ready Now if you don’t want to be late” reminder. Somehow the whole day had been whittled away between one chore and the next.

Rubbing a wet washcloth over his face and arms got rid of the dust that had gathered during his cleaning spree. Throwing on a clean sweater and his snow boats he headed out. The ride across onto the island was a slow as it ever was, having opted for a taxi rather than the subway.

The bar was exactly where he remembered it being from a weekend in mid-December spent exploring that part of the city. Pushing through into the dim, smoke filled interior, it took him a second to spot Jemma huddled at a high-top in the back corner. An untouched beer sat in front of her next to an emptied peanut bowl. Getting his own drink and a refill of nuts, he slipped between the other customers to slide onto the stool across from her.

“I know you didn’t invite me for drinks to make friends. What is this about?” Straight to the point. He appreciated that about her.

That didn’t mean he didn’t struggle to return the sentiment. “It could be. We’re work friends right? So why not out of work friend?” Yes, he heard what that sounded like, but she knew what he meant.

“Clint.”

Oh god, she was sounding like that one nun from before they ran away. The one who was so nice to the young, scared, grieving Barton boys, and was always disappointed but never angry when the two brothers got kicked out of another foster home.

“There’s a leak at work.” He got it out quickly, each word tripping over the one before it.

“What?!” She squeaked. Inexplicably glancing around the dive bar as if a black bag team was about to jump on her. The double handful of other customers weren’t paying the two new comers in the corner a seconds notice, all of them lost in the bottom of their bottles. “Why are you telling me this?” 

“I need your help. The leak is coming from someone with access to science and tech. Stuff at a level very few people have full access to.” Clint lent in which encourage her to lean in too. “I have a plan but I need someone with a chemistry background to help.” He turned his puppy dog eyes up to 100%, pleading with her to understand.

“There has to be someone else. I’m not a spy. I’m a scientist!” She couldn’t keep the nervous energy in anymore, her leg jumping under the table and her hands beginning to twitch, wanting something to occupy them. “We work with spies, ask one of them.” A wide swing of her arm, to encompass the rest of their agency Clint assumed.

“Because I trust you Jemma, not them. And even if there was someone else I trusted, they wouldn’t have the skill to pull this off.” He stopped talking and slowly withdrew his hands.

Through wide eyes she watched him, slightly vacantly, as her mind processed what he was saying. He saw the moment she accepted that he was being honest, he saw the spark of fiery determination being lit behind her wide brown eyes.

“What do you need me to do?” Her voice was firm. Now that she had decided to help, she would be all in.

His responding smile had no humour or goodwill behind it. 


	9. Jan - Feb 2014, New York

After that first Saturday sitting across from his newest neighbour, Phil’s life began to shift. Not in a large way, just in the little things. Looking forward to doing the paperwork that had been his least favourite part of taking over the little shop two years ago, smiling more - Tasha had mentioned it two weeks after that first Saturday- and feeling settled in his own skin in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Phil hadn’t had a friend since Ann had been sent away. Not someone outside of work or the parents of Skye’s schoolmates. Without the inbuilt distraction of their books on the one out of three Fridays that he hadn’t had to work, and his paperwork each Saturday, he wouldn’t have known what to talk about. As it was, they could talk or not talk as they needed. Thanksgiving saw a break in the routine that was so new it might not survive the interruption. The Wednesday night before the long weekend, Clint dropped in for a coffee in a to-go cup, chattering about going to DC to see his brother. The next Friday, the blonde man was back in the chair that Phil was quickly coming to think of as Clint’s. By the time Christmas rolled around, the routine had settled itself into his soul and he didn’t doubt that the other man would be back where he belonged after the holiday.

By January, it felt like the little group could have always have been found in the back corner of the shop, bent over paperwork or books. The usuals left the seats open for them if they were running late, which the other man seemed to be chronically, and newcomers were herded to other seating options.

The second Friday of the New Year was a jarring departure from routine for Phil, leaving him to question everything he had been thinking. The little shop was running smoothly, all his staff where they were meant to be and the normal pots New Year slump of people being out of the city had materialised. He wasn’t sure why but he blessed the extra income. With everything going well, he had taken the Friday evening off. Snow falling in steadily heavier flurries, he and Skye settled into their chairs, mugs of hot chocolate with piles of whipped cream and marshmallows on the table in front of them, just waiting on their third.

Skye was chattering about something that had happened at school that day. Classes had only gone back on Wednesday, but a massive falling out between Elise and Davis over something. Phil was only listening with half an ear to the primary school drama, the rest of his attention on the door waiting for Clint.

There wasn’t any usual time for the other man to arrive. He could get there any time, sometimes turning up when Phil was out collecting Skye from school mid-afternoon, and others only getting there as the final wave of office workers filtered off the subway. There may not be a set time, but it was around the usual time.

Each time the doorbell rang he couldn’t stop himself from glancing up. Each time it wasn’t the person he was waiting for. Eventually, he sighed to himself and tried to focus on Skye. Clint would get there when he got there. A rousing game of go-fish kept him distracted.

Skye almost cracking her face in half with a ear-popping yawn startled him. Where had the night gone? He glanced at the clock and it was well past the little girl’s bedtime, he looked around the shop as if Clint could have gotten lost somewhere between the counter and the trio of armchairs.

Fear stabbed into him. A fear that he hadn’t felt since the morning of his eighteenth birthday, laid out on the floor staring up at his father. It was the gut clenching, world ending fear that someone he loved was in danger. Clint had never missed Friday evening. Not without giving him a heads up. Worry that he had been hurt at work, or on his way home. They had never bothered exchanging contact details. He literally lived across the road. There had been no need.

“Dad?” Skye asked, pulling him back to the golden light and warmth of Pekar. She blinked sleepily at him from the soft embrace of her armchair.

“Sorry Munchkin, guess I’m as tired as you are.” He ruffled her hair.

Half-heartedly she ducked away from his hand, pouting at the interference with her ponytail.

“Come on. Bedtime.” He easily picked her up and wound his way through the shop with her head on his shoulder. All too soon she would be too heavy for him to pick up like that, but for now he could and she was still young enough to appreciate being held close.

A couple of the regulars they passed murmured a good night or sweet dreams and Skye returned them. He was tempted to stop at the counter and leave a message for Clint but if he hadn’t turned up by now, he probably wasn’t going to be there.

Phil carried Skye to bed without leaving a message.

= + =

Long into the night, Phil sat at the window and watched the snow banks deepen. His mind wasn’t sitting on any particular thought, rather flicking from one thing to another. In the dark night, with only the cold for company he had realised he wanted more than simple friendship from the other man.

It had been so long since he had any sort of romantic, or even just physical, attraction to anyone that he hadn’t recognised the feeling as it had grown. Oh, he had known he found Clint attractive the first day he saw the blonde man framed by the rusted and chipped metal of a moving van. But it had been in a detached, almost clinical way. Who would find him attractive after all? After that, it had slipped into the back of his mind. Lurking in the peripheries as their friendship grew.

The question that now remained was what to do with the newly realised knowledge. He could continue to ignore it and enjoy having a friend for the first time in almost a decade. His heart told him that was him being a coward, his brain countered with it wasn’t just him at stake any more. Skye was invested in Clint and anything he did to jeopardise that relationship was more important than anything else.

Another option was saying something. Inviting the other man out to somewhere other than Phil’s shop. To a beer on a Saturday night, or lunch during the week. Phil could go into Manhattan and meet Clint close to his office.

He fell asleep pressed against the freezing glass without coming to a decision.

= + =

Saturday morning dawned shatteringly cold, with a crystalline blue sky. Phil could feel the cold through the window glass that he was slumped against. He had fallen asleep while watching the snow. Cricked neck and stiff back couldn’t stand in the way of work though. Shaking the cold from his limbs he barely avoided taking a header down the stairs, grabbing the railing at the last minute and tripping down a couple of risers before finally catching himself and concentrating on where he was putting his feet.

The need for comfort food sat deep, working on autopilot, he gathered what he needed and set to work. Before ling enticing smells were wafting through the kitchen. Salt and grease of frying bacon mixed with earth sweetness of sweet potato and maple. Noa was on open that morning and slouched into the shop, nose twitching.

“Buenos días Boss. What’s on the menu today?” The teenager slung his backpack into the employee cupboard and reappeared.

“Bacon and sweet potato muffin with maple ice cream as optional.” Phil rattled off, scooping the fresh off-white dessert into the cooling containers they normally only used in summer when their ice cream maker was used every day. 

Mercifully Noa stayed silent, a furrowed brow the only commentary on Phil’s culinary choices. Muffins went in the display, the next round of bread loaves were hustled into the ovens and then it was just a matter of flicking the sign around from closed to open. The early morning rush busy enough to drive the lingering hamster wheel of thoughts out of his head.

Early afternoon wandered in on woolen scarves and golden hair. Clint ambled in slightly earlier than usual, flopping down into his chair next to Phil and Skye without bothering to take off his coat and obnoxiously purple scarf. Dark circles under his eyes and wan skin suggested deep exhaustion.

Phil felt a frisson of guilt, the other man looked sick and Phil had been upset thinking Clint had blown them off. He should still be in bed.

The afternoon settled into soft silences and happy laughter. Coffee lifting some of the tiredness out of Clint’s shoulders and Skye’s perpetual bubbly energy working away at the rest. It was only as Clint was rugging backup to brave the cold that Phil made a move, laying a hand gently on Clint’s forearm.

“I was thinking, we, um. We never swapped numbers. Just in case.” Phil tentatively held out a post-it note with his mobile, and home numbers written in his exacting lettering.

“Oh.” Clint stared down at the yellow square of paper for a long second.

He almost drew it back, feeling as if he had stepped over a line in their friendship he hadn’t been aware of.

“Oh, no.” Clint’s rough fingers darted out and plucked the paper from Phil’s retreating hand. “Here, wait. Ok. Do I? Yes. There. Ok.” He mumbled to himself as he disappeared the post-it and rummaged through his pockets for something. Eventually emerging with a scrap of receipt paper and a pen.

Clint’s own messy, cramped scrawl spread across the back of the glossy paper.

= + =

With numbers exchanged, a new layer to their friendship emerged. Throughout the day, with no discernible pattern or reason, Phil’s phone would buzz with an incoming text. Sometimes it was a blurry picture Clint had taken of a dog on his way to work or a witty chalkboard sign on a mid-day coffee run. Other times it was something he had overheard at work, a glimpse into the inner workings of a corporate office that Phil would never have experience in.

Phil came to treasure the tiny glances into Clint’s mind, a place that so often felt so foreign from Phil’s own. There were places where their life experiences were regretfully similar, but others that made their views on the world and other people drastically different. From the little he had put together, Phil thought that only a year ago, they would have shared a greater amount of trust in the world. But for the ex-Marine that had been eroded and Phil wasn’t sure if it would ever be rebuilt. Whether the cynicism that surrounded Clint’s mysterious departure from a job he had obviously loved would ever soften.

Each buzz of his phone was a small brick on top of an already strong foundation. Each interaction, a shuffling step closer. The next few Saturdays were heavy with an awareness that was new to Phil. Short glances that darted away if they eyes happened to meet. It left Phil tingling with possibility.

Maybe it wasn’t just him?

The last Wednesday of January, Tasha cornered him in the kitchen during the mid-afternoon lull. He was puttering about waiting for the danishes to come out of the oven.

“Enough.” Her voice cracked through the classical music that was playing softly over the radio. 

Jerking at the sudden, loud noise he sent a bowl icing sugar skittering across the work surface. Muttering curses at himself, her, and the universe he tried not to inhale the easily airborne powder. That was an easy way to half suffocate himself.

That was the second time someone had startled him in his own kitchen and he didn’t appreciate this time any more than he had the last.

“What?” He asked, a sharp edge to the word.

“Enough.” The repetition was unhelpful. “Just ask him already.” She lent a hip against the counter closest to the door into the cafe, closing off the easier of the two exits.

He scowled at her, raising a single eyebrow that tried to ask ‘ask who, what?’ but fell much more in the ‘I’m trying to act confused, but am coming off petulant’ end of the spectrum.

“Clint. Ask him out. Or I’ll do it for you.” She threatened. 

Disappearing as rapidly as she had appeared, leaving him in the sugar coated kitchen. He had no doubt that she would follow through. The question was how long would she give him? If she was annoyed enough to have made the threat, he didn’t think he had long.

Oddly, it was the final push he needed. Resolve settled in his gut. Next time he saw Clint, he would ask, suggest meeting somewhere that wasn’t Phil’s workplace for a beer and watch a hockey game maybe. The thought had merit.

= + =

Thursday started with a message on his phone waiting for him when he woke. Sent in the earlier even than Phil was up, it was from Clint.

→ Gng 2 b awy 4 wrk 2mrw c u sat

Disappointment flooded him. A bitter voice in the back of his mind sniped that it was a sign, he and Clint weren’t meant to be, the other man was well out of his league and he shouldn’t embarrass himself with his crush. The voice sounded a lot like his father.

No. It wasn’t just a crush and it wasn’t one sided. Clint would be there on Saturday and he would ask then. He left his phone next to his bed when he went downstairs, putting it out of his mind.

= + =

Seeing him walk through the door at 9 am on a Saturday was a little odd. Phil saw him from inside the kitchen, there had been a run on the chocolate croissants and he was making a third batch. He was sliding the full tray into the oven when the flash of weak winter sunlight on golden hair caught his eye. Something was different, a quick closer look showed lighter hair and reddened skin, as if he had spent a significant amount of time in the sun recently. Odd. Phil figured the other man had missed the company from the night before and was here early to fill that gap.

Hurrying to shut the oven and set the timer, he was resolved to ask about swapping their Friday coffee and book for a beer and game. Ducking back into the cafe, he started towards Clint’s chair, expecting the other man to be there with a book or file open on his knee. Two steps out from the counter he stopped. Across the room Clint was hugging a young woman, warm smiles on both their faces. Together they sat at one of the little French cafe style table and chair sets that was pushed up against the tall windows.

They were leaning across the table, talking quickly. Both of them engaged and interested in what the other was saying. The woman, who couldn’t be in her twenties yet, seemed to be speaking more, Clint nodding along with what she was saying. Her hands waving erratically as she emphasised a point. An arm waved out wide and then fingers flicking as she talked. Clint settled a large hand over both of her petite hands, pushing them gently down onto the table and leaving the pile there.

Oh god. It was a date. Clint had brought a date to Phil’s shop. Inside his chest, his heart twinged unpleasantly. At the realisation, Phil’s face instantly burnt with a deep blush. He couldn’t watch this. He shouldn’t watch this. Turning quickly he darted through the crowd, through the kitchen, and up the stairs into his apartment.

Skye and Tasha looked up at his sudden arrival. Two hours ago they had hassled him out of the apartment, waving Disney dvds and nail polish in his face until he had retreated. They were spread out in front of the couch, Mulan playing on the screen in Chinese with English subtitles, and rainbow polish drying on their nails.

“Daad! Girls only.” Skye whined. It was rare that the little girl felt the absence of her mother, but when she did the women in their lives, Tasha and Linda mainly, were happy to step in and have a girls day.

“Solnyshko, he can join.” Tasha scolded her lightly. “Phillip, you don’t look well.” Her accent thickened a little with her concern. “Come, sit.”

He slumped onto the couch at their backs, his mind reeling with the realisation that his feelings for his friend went quite a bit past friendship.

“Did Clinton say no?” A sliver of guilt laced her words. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://getinspiredeveryday.com/food/homemade-maple-ice-cream/  
http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/24080/bacon---kumara-muffins.aspx


	10. Jan - Feb 2014, New York

Ambling across the street, his mind was on the meeting with Jemma the night before. Overall, he thought she believed him. That didn’t mean he wasn’t worried that she wouldn’t mention the meeting to her friend, Fitz in DC, and he wasn’t someone Clint knew and trusted. He had been up half the night second guessing the decision to bring the biochemist into the fold. Almost getting side swiped by a speeding town car forced him to get his mind into the present and out of worrying about things he could change now.

Paying attention to his surroundings, he waved a casual hello to a number of people he passed. It felt good. He didn’t know their names, but he recognised their faces. Faces he saw on a semi-regular basis in Pekar, or the grocers, or the farmers market that set up down the street on the third Sunday of the month. It felt good to be part of a community again, even if it was his first experience with a normal community. 

The inside of the bakery/ cafe was warm and syrupy, a sweetness in the air called to Clint. A glance at the display showed bacon and sweet potato muffins with maple ice cream. The comfort food as muffin was exactly what he needed. Placing his order with Linda, he made his way over to their usual corner, shoulders drooping with exhaustion. 

The presence of Phil and Skye wedged itself between him and some of the weight pulling at him, helping him carry it just a little. A story Skye was telling of a spat at school brought a smile to his face. Easing him into the normal rhythms of their Saturday afternoons. 

Before long he was sharing his own anecdotes of pranks from Carson’s.

“You did not!” He huffed out between chuckles once his laughter had settled enough to get the words out.

“I did. Vanessa never figured out it was me. She is still convinced Barney was the one to dye her tights, every time they fight she brings it up. He will never live it down.” Clint was chuckling at the memory. Maybe one day he would clue his sister-in-law in to the fact that it had been him and not Barney that had messed with her costume but it was still too funny to have Barney grumbling about it when they talked. Clint only still had his skin, because Barney hadn’t figured it out either.

“Did anyone figure it out?” Phil asked, his bright smile lighting up their little corner.

“Theo did, I had gotten the henna from her.” Clint grinned. 

“It sounds like a good way to grow up. Full.” Phil’s smile faded slightly, his voice wistful. 

The smaller smile looked sad, Clint knew that Phil’s childhood hadn’t been ideal, but it wasn’t until that moment that he realised how empty of the support and unconditional love of family it had been. Skye just continued to grin, agreeing that growing up in a Circus sounded awesome, missing the subtext completely for which Clint was glad. He never wanted the little girl to see the dirt under the gloss of the fantasy.

“I do’nunno. There were good times, but it was hard work most of the time. When the audiences started drying up it got worse. Money was tight and people started leaving.” The laughter had dried up. The last two years had been a slow slide into poverty and ridicule. When the last of them had abandoned the Bit Top, Barney had been long gone, and Clint still had a year before he turned 18. All he knew was that he wasn’t going to go back in to the system. Six months he was on the streets before Theo and Rick had taken him in. They had helped him get his GED and get back in touch with Barney. They were family.

Phil didn’t have anything to say to that. They both knew hardship. Phil had told him about his own struggles of living pay check to pay check without the support of anyone but himself. It didn’t need reiterating. The conversation lapsed, the atmosphere melancholy but understanding in its silence. Each of them had times of deprivation and loneliness in their pasts, but they never judgement the other for it. Phil gave silent understanding for Clint’s time as a homeless youth, and Clint never judging Phil for being a teen dad.

Linda bringing a fresh round of coffee restarted the conversation.

“Oh god!” Clint moaned around his first sip. “How does your coffee get better every time I come here?” He wrapped his hands securely around his mug, unconsciously guarding it from the world.

Phil chuckled, his ears pinking. “I’m not sure about every time, but I’m trying a new bean.” Phil took a deep gulp of his own drink. He had to agree with Clint’s assessment, it was an amazing grind.

“Well, if you don’t keep it, I’m going to start a mutiny.” Clint’s eyes twinkled at him over the lip of his mug.

“Noted.”

Eventually Clint had to go, the sun was setting outside and he had housework to do that he had neglected that morning, to tied up in knots over Jemma to bother doing it. Phil’s hand stopped him from shrugging into his thick winter coat. Eyes darting up to meet the other man’s eye he silently asked what was up. A patch of yellow caught his eye.

“I was thinking, we um. We never swapped number. Just in case.” Clint hadn’t heard Phil sound that unsure, ever. He was always so sure of himself that it threw Clint more than he was willing to admit.

“Oh.” Was his unintelligent answer, eyes catching on the black ink. He realised he had paused for too long when Phil started moving to take the offering back. “Oh, no. here. Wait. Ok. Do I? Yes. There. Ok.” He found a crinkled receipt from lunch the day before forgotten in the inner pocket of his jacket and snatching up a pen from the table, scribbled his own number down. A little embarrassed by the difference in their handwriting he offered it anyway.

= + =

Clint stared down at the open message screen with the picture of a Shiba on the train on Monday morning, he debated not sending it. Phil had said ‘just in case’. Clint knew the implied reasoning was for emergencies. But the long week of having to watch everything he said and did loomed large and being able to break it up even a little with messaging someone outside of the mess that was his work life was a very appealing concept.

Closing his eyes, he hit send. If it wasn’t welcome, Phil wouldn’t respond or would tell him outright. The worst he could do was say no, Clint repeated to himself. It didn’t really help but it kept him occupied.

Using a maintenance entrance on the back of the building that no one else seemed to use, he was a shadow as he entered SHIELD. Back stairways and a pause to re-tie a bootlace that wasn’t loose had him getting to his desk without encountering anyone. Eventually he would have to interact with his fellow agents, but nerves over the message to Phil had turned the coffee in his stomach sour.

There wasn’t a reply waiting for him when he pulled out his phone at his desk. Switching on his computer, he kept one eye on the little device. A meeting notification pinged once he was logged on. Checking, it was for that morning. Shit, it was for now. Staring at his phone for a second, he shoved it into a draw and left it there, speeding off to his meeting.

He was shuffled from one conference room to another all day. The information from Montreal revealed a human trafficking ring in the Northern Sahara that they hadn’t expected. Clint was going in with the team as the back-up sniper, a larger team than the last op.

Leaving the office at closer to midnight than sunset, he finally thumbed open his phone. The envelope icon that meant he had an unread message was sitting innocently in the corner of the screen. 

Trying not to get his hopes up, it was probably a marketing thing, he clicked on the little icon. He wasn’t doing particularly well holding himself in check, he held his breath in the millisecond it took to load.

A cat grinned up at him from the screen with the caption, ‘I think cats suit you better, absolutely independent but loyal to their pride.’

Grinning stupidly, he tapped in a message. The grin didn’t leave his face as he left the office. Other agents giving him an even wider berth than usual, the expression one they weren’t used to seeing on the sniper’s face.

= + =

That first message broke the proverbial ice and messages flowed thick and fast over the next few weeks. Mostly from his end as he hid from Sitwell in the vents and overheard the inane office politics that he would never understand. Why did it matter that Agent Constantine had gone for drinks with Doctor Swann? They were both single and SHIELD didn’t have a no-frat policy like the military did.

Phil didn’t send as many, but they were all funny or cute. A photo of Skye, her face covered in permanent marker from where she’d tried to re-create their neighbour’s make-up one night. Or something he had overheard the hipsters that he couldn’t manage to keep away say.

Each message helped him hold onto his patience with the other SHIELD agents who continued to look at him with suspicion and distrust.

Leaving the office alone, as usual, on the last Thursday of January he didn’t feel as isolated as he normally did. The small weight of his phone in his pocket a reminder that he wasn’t alone.

“Agent Barton.” Sitwell’s voice crashed over him before he could step through the glass doors onto the street beyond. 

“Sir?” He turned around but kept the door open, making it clear he was heading out for the day.

“The Sahara Op has been moved up, grab your gear and get to the roof.” The Senior Agent spun on his heel and strode back into the dark confines of the building, probably to round up everyone else.

Clint let the door swing shut behind him.

It was only as they were half way over the Atlantic that he realised he was going to miss coffee with Skye and Phil on Friday night. Digging out his phone he tapped in a quick message, hit send and turned the phone off. They weren’t meant to have personal electronic with them during missions but fuck them if they though he was going to give up any advantage in case of things going FUBAR again.

= + =

The mission in Zarzis, Tunisia was the polar opposite from the one in Montreal, Canada. From the moment they touched down things went wrong. They landed on the roof of a warehouse in the port. Unknown to them, traffickers wasn’t the only illegal operation running out of the small port city and the warehouse they used as a landing zone had a heavy contingent of guards for its contents of high calibre weaponry.

Gun fire lit up the night.

Bursts of sound and light from the ground was met by the agents’ own fire and fury. The impromptu ambush settled into a pitched battle. Comm chatter back to Base calling for backup wasn’t going to be help any time soon. The closest SHIELD instillation with the sort of manpower to be helpful was London and it was a forty minute flight after they scrambled, and who knew how long that was going to take.

Clint was crouched behind a small air-conditioning unit, popping out from behind cover to pick targets off with single shots. His rhythm and movement was a sharp contrast to most of the other agents, they were favouring a spray and pray approach that was wasting ammunition and forcing the enemy to keep behind cover, making it harder for Clint and Sitwell, the only other agent choosing their shots, to find vulnerable targets. The whole thing would have been over in minutes if the rest of the team had just fucking not.

Instead the initial team were still battling for every inch of ground that they could when the second jet from London set down behind them, disgorging a well-armed and supplied team of agents. The newcomers scattered through the New York team, tossing clips, water bottles, and power bars as they went.

With the extra people, who had better trigger discipline than the team Clint had flown in with, the fight turned. Flowing from a pitched battle into a running retreat by the enemy. SHIELD swept through the area, netting any of them still standing.

Finally, finally the area is clear of people taking pot-shots at them. Sitwell’s voice cracked over the airwaves. Directing Agent with an efficiency that Clint could admire. He might not like the guy, but he could respect the competency he was showing. Agents scattered, one group collecting the handcuffed thugs, another spreading around the perimeter of the park stopping any of their friends from trying to come after them. The rest of them reconvened two buildings down from the one they were here for. The snafu with the firefight had blown any chance they had at maintaining the element of surprise, but hopefully their targets hadn’t rabbited.

A single hand signal from the Senior Agent sent Clint up the rusted metal of the building they were sheltering behind. Sprinting across the roof he made the leap to the next one, tumbling over his right shoulder from the momentum he came up in a crouch, weapon drawn. When nothing moved he stood and crept his way across the tarred roof until he could see down into the target building. No point in advertising his position.

There he waited. The rising sun bringing a sharp rise in temperature. It was going to get scorching in his exposed nest. The black tar holding the heat and sending it back at him tenfold. For almost an hour he sat in the steady rising heat, sweat starting to soak through his vest. Movement at the corner of the building told Clint the assault was starting.

About fucking time, he groused to himself. What had taken them so long?

A flash of light in the building opposite had him actively focusing, his mind coming back online after settling into the grey space he waited in when in a nest. Not quite awake, not asleep either. Long experience told him he could stay there for days if needed. The flash of light came again. It was a sniper scope, watching his team creep from wooden crate to shipping container.

Clint carefully lined up his shot and stroked the trigger, he would have preferred to have his bow, but the rifle allowed him to hit through the scope that had given the other sniper away. It was an old sniper’s game, only the best could manage it and even then the angles needed to be perfect. This was Clint’s second.

There was a second sniper to take out before the Agents on the ground breached the building. After they were out of his line of sight he turned his attention to watching their exits, allowing his mind to sink into the grey again.

Neck and scalp red and hot with sunburn from the burning midday sun, the double click on the comms told him that they were done and radio silence was no longer in effect. He stayed silent, still in position as noise crashed across the airwaves. Agents on perimeter checking in, calls for medics and guards. He stayed silent and watched as short line of prisoners were frog marched out of the building and into one of the waiting jets. Only once they were out of sight did a second group of people exit. They were in much worse condition and of every age and gender. Covered in dirt and stick thin, stunned by the bright light they were left to blink sun blindness away.

Clint felt his hands clenching and unclenching unconsciously around his weapon, deeply trained discipline keeping him in place even as he wanted to go after the people that had hurt the innocents below him for no better reason than profit.

Carefully breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth he slowly got the anger tied up in a ball that he could stuff low in his gut. It wasn’t particularly comfortable but it would fuel his next mission, the need to stop it happening to anyone else was a strong motivator.

“Hawkeye, status?” Sitwell’s cool voice brought Clint back to the here and now.

He had to bite the snarky comment back before it slipped out, others had joked or been sarcastic without censure but he was 100% sure it would be allowed to pass from him. And he really didn’t want to be left behind because he made the mistake of asking whether his handler was missing the sun protection a full head of hair would provide.

“All sightlines clear. Nest secure.” Not his most succinct sitrep ever, but close. Basrah was pretty hard to beat, a single sworn FUBAR was pretty descriptive.

“Roger.” Sitwell moved on, barking orders to other agents and trying to corral the freed prisoners.

The sun was just touching the far horizon when Clint stiffly climbed down from his perch, skin red and hair a few shades lighter from the long hours in the harsh sun. He knew in a few days the red would settle into a golden tan but right then it hurt and he was dehydrated from no one thinking to spell him out for a break. The discomfort had him stomping a little petulantly up the ramp of the jet. The few bad guys still alive were chained and black bagged at the front of the cargo area. Clint snagged a couple bottles of water and dropped into the closest seat, strapping in for the ride home.

The jet was thrumming with energy, coasting along at cruising altitude. In the middle of the seating area Sitwell stood and started the debrief. Clint added his two cents where needed, giving a run down of his firing technique from the pitched battle and then what had given the two snipers away. The first one was easy, the scope flash would have been visible to anyone. The other was more difficult, it had been feeling, a flash of intuition that only another sniper would understand. He shrugged when he told them that, none of them were trained for it and wouldn’t understand until they were.

One ear listening he drifted off, not asleep he didn’t trust any of them enough to sleep, but down enough to rest his eyes and mind. The rest of the flight back across the Atlantic was spent in loose limbed inactivity.

The debrief finished as they started their descent into the city. Clint listened as the other agents bustled around him. Stowing gear and themselves for what would be a quick and vertical landing. The ramp seemed to take an age to lower, Clint was standing at the top waiting for it to touch down so that he could get inside and do his paperwork and go home. He had been awake for going on 44 hours and had well and truely missed seeing Phil and Skye on Friday. The city beyond the SHIELD Office was as asleep as it ever got. Traffic mostly taxi’s taking drunk revellers home from their Friday NIght Out that had tipped into early Saturday, or delivery trucks using the mostly empty roads to do their drops.

A security team had been waiting just inside the roof access door and jogged across the tarmac to collect their newest charges. Hustling the prisoners off the jet and into the building. Clint was sure their next stop would be the deep, dark bowels where sunlight couldn’t reach.

It w a darkly satisfying thought.

Clint was the first to follow them across the roof, taking the stairs instead of waiting for the next elevator and being stuck in yet another metal box with a bunch of people.

The paperwork didn’t take long. A short AAR, and an even shorter equipment requisition to replace the ammunition in his go-bag and he was out of there before anyone else had even finished their first set of papers.

Waiting for a cab on the street a few blocks away from the office, he finally had a chance to power-on his phone and see if Phil had messaged him back. The small device chimed with a happy trill, a missed call and two text messages were waiting for him. No voicemail and recognised the spoofed ID as having come from inside SHIELD. Probably Jemma then, the only other people likely to call him from within SHIELD were Sitwell who had been on the mission with him, or Fury who would have known he was out of contact and was more likely to just break into Clint’s apartment again.

Deleting the record of the phone call, he flicked over to the messages. One was from Phil, and the other Jemma. He clicked into Phil’s first. It was a simple acknowledgement of Clint’s own message and well wishes for the work trip He wanted to message back with assurance of his safe return but had just enough social awareness that 3 in the morning was not an appropriate time. 

Leaving the thread alone, he moved onto Jemma’s message. Most of their thread was silly cat memes and science puns with a few actual messaged strewn between. He expected a video of kittens being silly with boxes or something. Instead it was an invitation to coffee the next day if he was back from work. The message rambled for a while, tripping over into one and then two and then three messages. Reading between the lines of gossip from DC she thought she had something and wanted to meet away from work. A suggestion of brunch, or coffees nine Saturday morning at ‘that bakery he never shut up about’ was at the bottom of the epic.

He sent a thumbs up in return just as the cab he had collapsed into pulled up in front of his dark building.

= + =

Shrill ringing woke him up not enough hours later. The sun was sending sharp shafts of light under and around the curtains that he had thankfully remembered to close, or at least hadn’t opened before he left on Thursday. Flopping over on his mattress he reached out to try and shut the alarm up. The offending device was just outside of reach. Damn himself for putting it somewhere he would actually have to get out of bed to turn off.

After only a few hours of sleep he was just as likely to turn over and fall back asleep if he stayed in bed. And he couldn't afford to miss Jemma.

Bypassing the coffee he sped walked out the door, he could get one across the road and it would just delay him further. He pushed into the inside of the cafe a few minutes after nine.

He had seen Jemma hunched in one of the white metal table and chair sets next to the window as he had hurried across the bitingly cold outside. She looked nervous, eyes flicking between people inside and out, waiting to spot someone paying a little too much attention to her.

“Jemma.” He waved a hand once he knew he would be in her line of sight. “Hey. Sorry I was running late.”

She had stood at the sound of her name, he swooped in for a quick hug, to friends meeting for coffee, and then they both settled into the cool metal chairs. They were the most uncomfortable seating choice in the whole place but with how full it was he wasn’t surprised they were the only seats free.

“That’s ok. I wasn’t here long.” She murmured.

It was a straight up lie. Her mug was empty and there was a plate at her elbow that only had crumbs. All Clint could allay his guilt with was that there was no way she hadn’t gotten there early, not unless she had inhaled whatever pastry had previously resided on her plate.

She was twisting her napkin so tightly that it was almost rope as they sat there in silence. With a sigh she put it to one side and, with a determined expression, met his eye. “There was a mission in San Francisco this week. A version of the neuroparalyser was used against our agents.” She launched straight in, hands flicking nervously as she talked. “I only finished the analysis late last night. I couldn’t work on it when anyone else was there. Obviously. And the gas chromatography takes a while to run and compare when dealing with molecular formulas that big, and all of that beside running multiple samples. Science is replicable and I won’t accuse someone because of a contaminated sample. Not that any of the samples were.”

“Jemma!” He cut in, laying gentle hands over hers holding them still. “Smile, breath. Two friends meeting for coffee.” He reminded her. He waited for her to take a deep breath in and release it, visibly centring herself. “You know who it is.” He said, cutting to the heart of the matter.

“Almost.” It was almost an apology, “I miscalculated the decay rate of one of the elements I used as a marker. But I narrowed it down to two. Agent Garrett or Doctor Foster.” She gave the first name willingly, Clint knew the single time she had met the older agent he had been an absolute creep. The second name slipped from her lips, almost inaudible under the roar of the other café patrons. 

He just picked it up. He understood her reluctance. 

Foster had been one of her instructors at the Academy and still acted as a mentor to her. If it wasn’t the Biochemist and he was hurt or his reputation damaged because of her, she would never forgive herself. Clint wished it hadn’t been Foster. He wished it could have been someone she didn’t like, making it easy to suspect them. That was exactly why he hadn’t gotten close to anyone else in the agency, to become friends and then have them exposed as a traitor, it was a lot to ask of anyone and Jemma had no experience in that sort of betrayal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/06/11/the-vietnam-sniper-who-shot-an-enemy-sniper-through-the-enemys-own-scope-hitting-him-in-the-eye-and-killing-him-2/


	11. Jul 2005 - Jun 2012, New York

On the day of his 18th birthday, Phil left his little home town. Driving until he couldn’t any more, eyes stinging with exhaustion and barely held in tears. He would never look back. The beat up truck coasted to a stop in what could have been any street in New York. He had always wanted to visit the big city and had pointed his car in its general direction when he had started driving. Even in the middle of the night, the streets were full of people, laughing and yelling, whispering and silent. He was surrounded by more life and colour than he had ever seen in one place in his life.

Now he was here though, he had no idea what he was going to do. He didn’t know anyone here, he didn’t know anyone outside of South Carolina. He didn’t have anywhere to stay or anyway to make money. What had he been thinking? It wasn’t just him he had to think about any more. Skye couldn’t be homeless. He tucked her blanket closer around her tiny body. He had some money saved up from working at the bakery and landscaping all summer. Hopefully, it would be enough for a security deposit on an apartment. He could start looking for a job tomorrow.

He didn’t sleep a wink, every time he started to nod off someone would shout or a car would backfire jolting him from sleep. Searching in the half dark of the truck’s cabin for Skye, desperate to make sure she was okay. At the crack of dawn, he pulled her from her seat and settled her in the little carry bag, thing. Every door he knocked on took one look at the baby on his chest and turned him away, some were kinder about it than others but most scoffed or grumbled about him wasting their time.

And older woman in a small bakery was the kindest of them. She apologised that she had filled the help wanted ad in her window the day before, but loaded him up with loaves left over from the day before. From sunrise to sunset he trudged up street after street, stopping everywhere that had a sign in the window. Ending the day by parting with a little bit of the hard earned money he had left from Kingston, to get the formula he needed for Skye, there had only been enough in the nappy bag for a few days and he didn’t want her going hungry.

A long day was followed by another restless night. Early in the morning as the city settled as much as it ever did, he dropped into exhausted tossing. Waking to the rumble of delivery vans, he sat in the reclined car seat and sightlessly watched the large vehicles trundle past. Yesterday hadn’t worked, he couldn’t just keep wandering. Setting out he went in search of the library, they should have internet and he could spend the morning searching online and emailing his resume. It would mean going back periodically to check for responses but he could cover more ground that way.

After an hour in front of the computer, sending more applications than he could count, Skye began to fuss. Whining and then crying. The other people in the library were beginning to glower. He hurried her out of the building and across the street to a park. He fed her, watching the people hurry past intent on their own lives and worries. After she had settled back into her sling, he began walking again. Stopping when he saw an ad for a job, eventually circling back to the car. He would run out of clean clothes and bottles for Skye tomorrow. At the library that morning, he had looked up a list of shelters. Of places he could get Skye clean.

Another night of stop and start sleep. He was up with the dawn again. There was a shelter three blocks down and one over that had childcare facilities. He was in and out quickly and at the library for open. And so went his days. Shelter every few mornings to get them both clean, library after to check and send applications, and then walking the streets for the afternoon, trying to find someone who would take him.

Their first two weeks in New York were spent like that, moving to a different area every few days, changing shelter each time and working his way across the borough. For three weeks that was how they spent their days. On his twenty-second day as the leaves had tipped from green with gold tips, to gold with green hearts, he took the morning off from the library. Instead ducking into a small bakery/cafe in central Brooklyn. The smell of fresh pastry wafting from inside was too alluring to resist.

The shop was stuffed with chairs and tables of every description, threadbare sofas that would never let you out of their soft embrace, French cafe settings, a long rough wood table with benches that would hold twelve. No single design appeared more than once, but it worked. It was warm and inviting instead of the stark coolness of so many of the other cafes and bakeries he had visited in the last few weeks. It reminded him of his grandmother’s cluttered lounge room from his early childhood.

He ordered a coffee and fresh raspberry danish that was still steaming from the oven and carefully wound his was between furniture and people to settle in an armchair that was alone next to the window. His tired body sunk into the plush green fabric. Unwrapping Skye he cradled her in his lap, her fists waving in the air above her face or being covered in slime as she sucked on them. 

Taking his time in his drink and food, he whiled away the morning. He had talked or emailed hundreds of places asking about work, and not just in New York either. He had nothing tying him to the city. As it got colder, if he didn’t find work, he would have to head south again. He sat and watched as the crowd swelled with people wanting their coffee fix before work and then waned as their day started. The two staff members moved around him. Picking up after the few people that had stayed to drink here, refilling the sugar containers and putting books back on the shelves that took up a corner of the shop. Laughter followed them as they worked.

This was the sort of place he wanted to work. A place that was more family than co-workers. Who asked after their customer’s children, and mocked each other’s weekend plans. A community. 

He scoffed at himself. As if. He wasn’t going to get that. He was going to end up working a cash in hand, below the minimum wage job where his boss wasn’t sure if his name was Phil or Jeff. Tucking Skye back into her sling, he left. The way was getting away from him and he needed to keep on keeping on.

The next morning he sat in front of a computer that went into production that same year he started school. Waiting for the thing to whirr to life he gave Skye a finger to suck on and contemplated when he would start heading south. It had been unseasonably cold the night before and he didn’t have any winter clothes for either of them.

His inbox was empty except for an advert trying to sell him a pill that he unequivocally didn’t need. Deleting the spam he clicked across to the job boards for DC and its surrounds, he wasn’t willing to go any further south than that on the East coast. For three hours he sent in his resume for every cafe, bakery, restaurant, janitor, and landscaping job he could find. There weren’t many.

He estimated he had two more days of door knocking in Brooklyn before he would have to move on. Queens was his next and last stop in New York. If it got too cold he would leave, otherwise further north on Long Island might have more opportunities.

His estimate was slightly over what he needed. By four the next day, he had gotten to the limit of the borough. He would move in the morning. Rather than going back to sit alone and cold in his car, he went back to the bakery from Tuesday. He could curl up with Skye, a mug of something warm and one of the well-worn paperbacks from the bookshelves.

Blinking awake slowly, he realised he wasn’t in the cold, pokey confines of his car. He was surrounded by warmth and sitting in something soft. The realisation that the environment wasn’t right had his properly awake in an instant. The feel of eyes on him had him scrambling for his jacket and wallet, ready to run.

“Easy mal’chik. You’re okay.” An elderly man was sitting in a chair across the table from him that hadn’t been there before. He held up his hands in the universal, there is no threat here, signal, hands open and held away from his body. “Here drink.” He pointed at a pot of tea, his own mug already half gone, he had been there a while.

Phil sunk back into his seat and accepted the cup. Sniffing it carefully before taking a sip. Smoke and Paprika? exploded across his tongue. It was good. He took a deeper drink from the slightly too hot drink.

The man hummed, pleased. They sat in silence as they each drunk.

“My people saw you in here a few days ago. And now you sleep in my shop.” Most people would have been angry, or at least annoyed, that he had fallen asleep, taking a table away from someone who was going to buy more than a single black coffee. He just sounded concerned under his thick accent. “Why do you not go home?”

Phil looked into the depths of his mug, hoping he would find the answer that would appease the man across from him. The depth of the mug continued to send steam spiralling into the air, which didn’t mean much to him accept that there was still at least a mouthful of the amazing tasting tea for him to drink. So he did. He couldn’t avoid answering forever through.

“No home to go back to.” He hadn’t expected the truth to come out when he opened his mouth but there it was. His shame. The justification for someone to try and take Skye from him.

“Ah.” The sound was understanding. It had depths that said, I have been there, I will not judge. “You have work?”

Phil’s face instantly flushed. Heat starting in his ears and neck and spreading fire into his cheeks. Mutely he shook his head, in for a penny, in for a pound and if this guy wanted to report him to DOCS, he already knew enough to rip his heart out.

The man across from him sat and contemplated the red-faced Phil and the sleeping Skye for a long time. “Yes. Come.” He stood, collecting the teapot and mugs and was moving, not waiting to see if Phil was following.

What the hell, it couldn’t really get worse. Phil got up and followed, holding Skye’s car seat close. The man was far enough in front of him that by the time Phil got to the counter, he had finished a short conversation with the woman behind the coffee machine. He left the tea service with her and led Phil into a kitchen with large ovens along one wall, gleaming metal work tables in the middle of the room and doors into a store room, cold room, and another door that Phil thought might lead outside on the other wall.

“What can you do?” His attention wasn’t on Phil. He was bustling around the space, his space, the master of his little corner of the universe.

“I was helping the baker in my town. Mostly just minding the ovens in the morning. Gardening. Cleaning. Anything that needs to be done, I’m happy to do.” Phil knew he sounded desperate. He was desperate.

“And the malysh? Will their mother come looking? Or anyone else?” At that he stopped. His sloe eyes that had been kind were sharp this time. If Phil lied, or this man thought he lied about this, Phil was absolutely sure the man’s next words would be to the police. He didn’t know why he reacted so strongly to the thought of a stolen child, but respected it.

Phil met those dark eyes, willing him to believe. “No. She wanted Skye, but she wasn’t 18. Her parents sent her away. My dad is all I have and he won’t be looking for us.”

“Then you can stay. I start at 4am. You will be up. She may come.” He nodded at Skye. “If you can do what you say, you can stay. I have free apartment upstairs, rent can come from your wages. Yes?”

“Yes! Thank you. Yes.” Phil’s mind was whirling with the opportunity and changes that this man was giving him. “Wait. Who are you? We haven’t… I’m Phil. Coulson.” Embarrassingly he stumbled over his own name.

“Pavel Romanychev. You can call me Paul though, easier. Get it right. No, uh, twist, saying.” He twined his hands around each other as he tried to think of the word, which Phil assumed was pronunciation. “This is my bakery, Pekar. Dobro pozhalovat'.”

= + =

Phil got the job. He and Skye moved into the apartment above the shop. For six years he worked side by side with Paul, up before the sun and working to balance the bakery and being a single parent to an endlessly energetic child. He loved it. He loved learning more than when to take the bread out of the oven. He learnt how to make the dough, how to roll out pastry for pies or danishes or croissants, his apartment was always filled with the smell of his latest muffin experiments.

After two years he wanted more. He wanted something to show for himself more than just Skye and being able to bake a kickass sourdough. Online community college was added to his workload. A business degree that he would finish just as Skye was starting Middle School. Keeping all of the balls that he was juggling in the air was almost as hard as the work itself, but he managed it.

He managed it with the help of the community that orbited around the bakery. Paul and his niece Tasha, who Phil would count as a friend if she was in New York, more than one week in every eight, babysat when Phil needed to take an exam. Linda, the high schooler who Paul had hired three years after Phil, sat silently across from him doing homework when both of them were off work. Anita, the elderly woman across the road who remembered when the bakery had been a jazz bar, who taught him to cook something other than bread to feed him and Skye. And so many others he never would have survived without.

For six years his life had been quiet in its routine. 

It was the middle of a heatwave and the temperature outside had been over 85 since before he got up. The kitchen was a furnace with the ovens running. He had set the bread and then retreated to the front of the shop to work on schoolwork until the timer went off.

It was there that Paul found him an hour later. The man was looking worn. He had passed the early morning work on to Phil the year before but was still looking just a little more ragged every time Phil saw him. If he thought the old man would listen Phil would try and talk him into seeing a doctor and maybe letting Phil take on a little more around the place. But he was proud. Paul was proud of what he had built in the little store and allowing Phil to take some of the responsibility had been hard for him and only accomplished after an intense screaming matching in Russian between him and his niece.

“Dobroye utro.” He sunk into the chair across from Phil with a groan.

“Morning Paul.” Phil set his work aside, getting up to duck into the kitchen for the bread and pastries before make them both a coffee. 

Bringing the mugs back to the table he passed one over and sat back down.

“Tasha got back last night.” Paul wasn’t looking at Phil, instead following the few people on the street in the early morning light.

They would have to open soon.

“How was her trip?” Phil wasn’t sure where this was going.

“Chertova trata eyo vremeni” Paul spat.

Phil picked up bits, enough when combined with the tone to know it hadn’t gone well. He nodded and hummed in sympathy.

“She is dragging me to doctor this afternoon, you will cover shop?” Paul asked, although they both knew it wasn’t really a question, Phil was always happy to lend a hand.

“No problem. Let me know when?” The only time he wouldn’t say yes was if it meant he couldn’t pick Skye up from school.

“Four.” Paul said even as he was levering himself out of his seat to shuffle into the kitchen. He was on baking duty until his appointment while Phil was out front.

= + =

Phil heard them coming before he saw them. 

“Vy dolzhny zamedlit'. Ty stareyesh'.” Tasha’s normally even voice could have shattered metal it was so cold. 

The whole room stopped to watch them as they pushed through the front door. 

“Ya vse eshcho molozhe tebya.” Paul grumbled beside her.

The look she threw at him for that comment was cutting. Suddenly her whole face softened. “Ya ne khochu poteryat' tebya, poka ya ne budu vynuzhden.” She whispered, her small hand resting on his arm carefully as if afraid he would break.

The fight went out of Phil’s boss, his shoulders sagging. “I know Dushen'ka. I’m sorry.”

Both of their eyes were sad. 

“Phil once Linda arrives can you come upstairs?” Natasha asked. 

“Sure.”

Slowly, the room returned to the quiet bustle of mid-afternoon that it had been before their loud entry.

Half an hour late Linda came crashing through the door, tying her apron on even as she was apologising, her English teacher had kept them all back and she had missed her bus. Leaving her in charge, he collected Skye from the armchair in the corner of the shop where she had been colouring since finishing school for the day, and went upstairs. 

He paused at the top of the stairs, to bring Skye with him or send her into their apartment. In the end he brought her with him, maybe her presence would stall any further yelling. He knocked on their door and went in when Tasha yelled that it was open.

“Solnyshko! Come colour over here while we talk to your Papa.” Tasha bundled Skye away from him and to the table that sat beside their wide window.

“Okay!” Skye was happy to be bundled by the redhead. 

Once the little girl was settled, Phil, Tasha, and Paul sat around the kitchen counter, a pot of tea steaming between them. They were all playing chicken with who would start the conversation.

Tasha was the one who ran out of patience first. Slipping from her seat she whispered across the floor, got a bottle of vodka from the cupboard and was back in her seat between one blink and the next. She tipped a good helping of the strong spirit into each of their cups and thunked the bottle down next to the teapot.

“Uncle Paul is sick.” She started.

“What?” The word came out as a yelp before he could catch the shock. Phil’s next words were lower, not wanting Skye to overhear. “How sick? What’s wrong?” He couldn’t think of anything intelligent to ask.

“I’ll be fine.” Paul said, defiant.

“No, you won’t.” Tasha addressed first her uncle and then Phil. “No, he won’t. He will have to stop working.”

“I’m fine.” Paul grumbled. Speaking more to his tea than to them.

“How soon? I’ll help with whatever you need. I’m so sorry.” Phil stumbled over his words. Paul had become the father he had never had. In the six years he had been working for the man he had never even raised his voice, even that time Phil had burnt everything because he had been up all night with a colicky Skye.

“He will be slowing down now. Another month or two and he won’t be able to work at all.” Tasha spoke over her uncle’s continued grumbling which had moved into Russian that sounded rude. “His doctor recommended a hospice in Albany that I will be looking into.”

“What’s going to happen with the bakery?” Phil cared about Paul, but he also needed to worry about feeding Skye and himself. Knowing Tasha though, she would appreciate the directness and sensible question.

“You will take it over.” Paul broke in. 


	12. Feb 2014, New York

For more than a week he got away with avoiding Clint. Taking a corporate order that he normally would have turned down, it wasn’t what Pekar did after all, but it kept him occupied on Friday when he otherwise would have had to sit and make small talk with Clint. On Saturday, he bundled Skye up and took her to Manhattan to go ice skating, leaving a message with Juan that they would be out the whole day. It was worth Skye using the whole subway ride to the island to continually festoon him with judgemental looks. For eight years old, she was too good at that. Luckily, it was quickly forgotten when he got her on the ice. Her joy in the activity overtaking her even though she spent as much time sitting on the ice as she did skating. 

The next time Phil actually saw Clint was the Tuesday after successfully avoiding him all weekend. He had come in to grab a coffee on his way to work, which he only did occasionally. Phil had been at the counter when he spotted the shock of messy blonde hair headed in his direction. Practically throwing the order book at Juan, he high-tailed it the fuck out of there. 

It was easily the most embarrassing action of his life. 

He had hunched behind the prep counter in the kitchen and listened as Clint ordered his standard black coffee to go. He listened to the hiss and spit of the coffee machine and Juan’s cheery ‘see you later’. He didn’t get up from his awkward position until the bell over the door jingled with the other man’s departure.

Standing from his hiding place he dusted off his pants, trying to convince his mind it was nothing, he had just been getting something from the floor.

“You are pathetic.” Tasha’s voice rang through what he had through had been an empty room.

Shit. How much of that had she seen?

He turned to meet her eye. She was standing in the doorway that led to the stairs, arms crossed, hair perfectly styled, and the most judgemental look on her face that Phil had seen since last faced with Ann’s parents.

Shit. She had seen everything.

Clearing his voice, he tried to deny it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He was almost out the door when she spoke.

“It wasn’t a date.” Her words stopped him cold.

Well, he wasn’t going to be able to play that off. His shoulders slumped in defeat, she had him and the barely there smirk on her face told him she knew it.

“The woman. She wasn’t a date.” She said again, over enunciating each word.

“And how would you know?” It came out defensive, not something you ever wanted to be with Tasha. She was a shark, she could smell the blood in the water and went straight for the jugular.

“I asked.” 

She left him flapping like a fish out of water. Flitting past him out the door to where ever it was she spent her days when she was in the city, a full messenger bag over one shoulder. Of course she fucking asked. Because that is the intelligent, adult thing to do.

Gathering himself, Phil left the kitchen. He had a business to run and skulking about avoiding one of his customers wasn’t going to make that any easier.

= + =

Clint left Pekar confused and defeated. Phil was avoiding him. Not seeing the other man all weekend was unusual but not inexplicable. His visit to the cafe suggested otherwise. It hadn’t been coincidence. He had woken up late this morning, he was meant to be at work at 8.30 and he had slept straight through his alarm. The raw throat and runny nose heralded an oncoming cold that wasn’t surprising with how broken his sleep had been recently, and quickly ramping up hunt.

He had stumbled out of bed at 7.45 to find that he had no caffeine in the house. Nothing. Not even tea. It’s why he had stopped even though getting to work on time was going to be tight already. The outlook for the day had brightened when he had spotted Phil behind the register, talking animatedly with Sarah a single mom who lived further down the street. As he watched out of the corner of his eye, the car barrelling down the street taking his direction attention, Phil glanced up, saw him and fucking bolted as if he had seen the devil coming to collect his soul. 

It wasn’t coincidence.

Phil was avoiding him. Clint wasn’t sure why though. Last time they had talked everything had been fine. Normal. Clint had ribbed Phil for following the Carolina Panthers, the Hawkeyes were obviously the better team, maybe he had tipped from friendly sports rivalry into annoying? More than once as they had been growing up, Barney had told him he was annoying, too in your face, always hanging off him. Clint had thought he had grown out of it, but he hadn’t been friends with anyone outside his Marine team for a long time. And they had exchanged a slew of text messages after that. If Phil was really annoyed with him, he wouldn’t have wished him luck on his work trip a few weeks ago.

Phil didn’t seem the sort to just start avoiding someone because they got on his nerves, Clint would have thought Phil would have just told him. Asked him to back off or turn it down. Not just start ghosting him.

What else could it be though?

With a wain smile to Juan, Clint collected his coffee and got the fuck out of there. If Phil didn’t want to see him, he wouldn’t force himself on the other man. With coffee in hand he had to concentrate on how he was walking, making sure he was walking and not running. Never show weakness. Never let them see you hurt.

The coffee was cold by the time he remembered he was holding it. The man standing behind him on the subway jostled his elbow making the liquid slosh in its cup. Even cold, it was better than nothing. Gulping it down, he was slurping up the last of it as he stepped onto the platform.

He walked into his briefing ten minutes late, the few people that hadn’t turned at his entrance, spun around to glare at him when he started sneezing as he stepped into the room. Today was going to be a bad day.

They had started without him. Which was fine, it was the follow up to the Montreal and Tunisian Ops and Clint knew where it was going. Their contact working in the genetics lab at Université des sciences et technologies de Montréal. He had been working late and seen work that shouldn’t have been going on. Copying all of the data, he had contacted SHIELD, demanded a face-to-face to hand it over.

The exchange had gone smoothly and according to the analysts the data had been a gold mine. In one action they had uncovered a massive operation playing with X-gene DNA. Clint listened with half an ear as they planned out the next step. The research wasn’t only in Montreal, there was a second team in the Canary Islands. SHIELD was sending in two teams. Clint was part of the team taking the lab in the Canary Islands. 

It was going to be big. 

Clint’s team was bugging out late that afternoon, timed to get them to the mountains above Sabinosa on El Hierro’s Western coast at midnight. The lab was cut into the volcanic cliffs above the tiny village.

The briefing broke up mid-afternoon. Clint had enough time to grab a late lunch, his first meal of the day and some food to snack on during the flight, collect his gear from the armoury and quartermaster and still be the first of the team on the jet.

24 hours later, Clint wished he had stayed in bed. Maybe called in sick? Could he call in sick, is that a thing SHIELD agents were allowed to do? Too late now.

“SON OF A BITCH! What are you doing? I would like to keep my fucking arm!” Clint yelped, the team’s medic glared at him over the blood stained bandages and gloves.

The moment they had landed the op went balls up. They had been fired on the second they had left the jet. Bullets flying out of the dark from multiple directions. Clint had ducked behind an out cropping of basalt, pulling Timons, one of the other agents, down with him. Timons was a wet behind the ears Junior who hadn’t seen fire before. He was going to earn his stripes by the end of the day.

Inch by inch, the SHIELD team pushed forward. Eating up the distance between themselves and the enemy. Dawn broke behind them as they broke into the facility, a trail of bodies and blood marked their path.

The lab space was gleaming chrome and paint. Large lab spaces full of glass and chemicals. They had almost cleared the facility when a burning started in the tips of Clint’s fingers of his right hand. Between one heartbeat and the next, the fire had spread from his fingers up his arm. It was quickly too much to ignore. Dropping out of the line of agents, he looked down. The skin along the back of each of his fingers had split from his fingernail beds to the middle of his hand, the slices meeting up and then continuing straight up his arm to his elbow. Blood was running off each of his fingers, the whole cut bleeding freely. His left hand snaked into the pocket over his heart, pulling gauze and bandages out. Pressing it to his arm he struggled to wind the material around his arm. Tying it off, he picked up his gun and stepped back out in the line of fire. In front of him, an agent he didn’t know the name of fell with a scream, clutching the right side of his face, blood gushing from between his fingers. 

Clint knelt beside the downed man, dropping his unused gauze on the cuts criss-crossing his face. Wedging the gauze under the other man’s hands. He left him there, calling in the injury as he went.

The reduced team swept into the last room. It wasn’t polished metal and perfect paint here. It was row after row of cages. Hurt, broken people cowering in the corners. Dressed in stained hospital gowns and shivering from exposure.

Suffering infused the very air they were breathing, pressing any lingering sense of hope or happiness out of you.

There was only one person standing free when the SHIELD agents entered. With shadows wrapped around the figure like a shroud, it was hard to make out any features. Cold dark eyes glinted out from within the dark. They flicked a finger. The agent next to Clint went down with a whimper, blood pumping from a deep leg wound. The clinical part of Clint’s brain categorised it in a flash, ‘femoral artery, dead’. Teeth flashed in a feral grin. They were getting off on hurting Clint’s team. Finger curled into a fist by their side and two more agents were down or staggering. 

Time slowed down. The barrel of Clint’s pistol was tracking to line-up with the figure’s heart. On the other side of the room, fingers were moving again. The recoil of his shot came at the same time the figure flicked their fingers, feral grin deepening with fulfilled bloodlust. Clint almost dropped the suddenly slippery weight of his gun, blood coating the dull silver metal. 

“Son of a bitch.” He breathed through the pain. The cuts had deepened and extended, reaching all the way to his shoulder and glints of white bone showing at his knuckles. 

Around him, the team were treating themselves as they could, swathes of sterile cotton unspooling from pockets and swatches of gauze was passed around to stem the flow. Clint just allowed himself to sink to the floor. His right arm hung uselessly at his side. The only first aid equipment he had left on him was a few band aids and a couple of aspirin. He swallowed the pills dry, trying to stem the fire that was racing up every single nerve ending in his arm.

Eventually someone came and helped him. Her face swam in and out of focus, blood loss pulling his attention inwards. Time jumped, salt-heavy open air slapped him in the face. When had he moved outside?

The area around him was swarming with agents. Some of them were members of his team who were back on their feet, others were medical or scientific staff that he could only identify by the badges on their shoulders and the id’s clipped at their hips.

The floating face from earlier was back. Blood smudged gloves over her hands as she cut away what remained of his jacket and shirt sleeves. The scissors disappeared and were replaced with a big ass needle. That wasn’t going to end well.

The jab of metal into the meat at the top of his shoulder was barely a sting under the burn of the injuries. He felt the next jab, and glared down at the medic. The third stick was in his elbow and hurt more than the injuries. 

“SON OF A BITCH! What are you doing? I would like to keep my fucking arm!” Clint yelped.

“Which is what I’m doing! Stay still.” She jabbed him again without breaking eye contact.

Slowly the anaesthetic won the war, pushing the pain back to the edges of his awareness. The medic was watching him carefully, waiting for the tension to drain from his back and shoulders. Then she was back, needle and sutures in hand.

“I can close some of this now but a doctor will have to look at the rest. Make sure there isn’t any nerve or muscle damage.” She talked at him as she worked, more to keep him conscious than from any belief that he would retain the information.

He hummed happily back at her. 

The white, sterile ceiling of a hospital room replaced the grim-faced medic between one blink and the next. His arm wasn’t burning any more either. It was heavy with drugs and bandages though. He was alone in the room, the beep of his heart monitor the only sound. An IV snaked into his left arm. Craning his neck to read the saline packet upside down without turning around, he could see that they were pumping him full of antibiotics and morphine. That explained the drowsiness that was already pulling him down, even though he had only just woken up. 

The painless pull and poke of a doctor checking his stitches had him swimming back out of the depths of drug induced stupor some time later.

“What’s up doc?” He asked with a giggle. He liked Bugs, he looked like he would be soft to pat.

The doctor shot him a flat unimpressed look before injecting something into Clint’s IV port. And he was gone, floating off on the soft, fuzziness of the drugs.

“Oh good you’re awake.” A chipper voice greeted him when he next came to with a groan. Jemma. His mind identified.

“Oww.” He answered.

“Certainly. That was quite a number you did. They were worried about nerve damage which is why they kept you sedated for so long. There is some, but nothing a touch of PT won’t fix right up.” As she chattered she bustled. Smoothing the blankets flat under his arms and around his body, tidying lines and reading his chart. All while talking. “Doctor Amherst stopped counting after two hundred stitches, you were very lucky.” 

Watching her move around was making him nauseous, his empty stomach tossing as he instinctively tracked her.

“Jemma.” He tried to interrupt.

“They want to keep you in for a few more days. Check you are healing properly.”

“Jemma!” He tried again, sharper this time.

“Oh, sorry. Yes?” She actually bit her lip to stop herself from continuing.

“I’m ok?”

“Yes. You’ll be fine.” She nodded.

“Then I’m going back to sleep.” He closed his eyes to punctuate the statement even though the roiling of his gut would keep him awake for a while yet.

“Sleep well.” She left him to it. 

= + =

Phil spent the rest of the day burning with low level embarrassment. More than one regular had eyed him judgingly or made a comment on his recent resemblance to a jellyfish. After an hour of it he retreated to the kitchen, leaving the floor to Juan and Linda when she arrived. Losing himself in the books and ordering for next month allowed himself to mostly forget. 

He had worked himself into a better mood when Skye skipped into the apartment after her school activities, Simone walked Skye and her own children home every Tuesday allowing Phil to get some work done. He returned the favour on Mondays after swimming. A piece of paper was fluttering in her hands, her excitement was being transmitted into the paper through her tight grip. 

“What have you got there sweetie?” He asked as he dried his hands off, he had just put a Shepard’s pie in the oven for their dinner and had just washed the bit of potato he hadn’t been able to avoid off his hands. 

“I was drawing with Tommy and Oliver.” She presented the printer paper to him as if it was one of Da Vinci’s lost masterpieces. 

Flipping the sheet over, he grimaced as the crude illustration. Skye was good at a lot of things, drawing wasn’t one of them, but even he could tell it was a jellyfish bobbing amongst a forest of seaweed, even if the scyphozoa was an unlikely purple and yellow striped and the plants had heart shaped pink spots. 

“Juan was telling Linda a story about a jellyfish and it was funny so I drew it for you!” He really didn’t need the confirmation that they were still gossiping about him downstairs.

“I’ll put it on the fridge. Go and get ready for dinner.” He wouldn’t get away with not putting it up.

The remainder of the night was much more pleasant. Just Skye and him surrounded by the warmth of their apartment. Phil helping her with her homework and quietly chatting about what they were going to be doing that weekend. Skye had a dance recital coming up and had an extra practice early Saturday to prepare and Phil had accepted an order for Wedding Cake that Tasha had brought to him. He didn’t like doing the fancy decorations that were needed for suck formal deserts but also couldn’t say no to her, mostly because he was his friend but also because she was a part owner. 

Phil only had to endure a few quickly hidden snickers over the next few days, and by Friday it was forgotten, everyone having moved on to a stupid tweet their local councilman had sent out the night before. Just in time for him to make an idiot of himself that night. He had no excuse to avoid Clint for their usual Friday night coffee, but still hadn’t decided what he was going to do about Wednesday. If he was lucky, Clint wouldn’t have seen him and he would be able to ignore the whole thing. He didn’t trust his luck enough for that to have happened. He had used up any stores he had when the other man hadn’t come into the cafe since.

Friday passed slowly, a rare quiet day in the little shop. Between the end of the lunch time rush and the start of the post-school families, he didn’t have a single customer come in. It happened sometimes, the cold had people hurrying past and a storm was threatening, keeping people in doors.

He used the time to refine the design for the cake, they wanted a Winter Wonderland with Silver and Red as their colours. It was going to be beautiful, if he did say so himself. Four octagonal tiers with marzipan holly and silver snow.

At ten to three had left the quiet shop in Juan’s capable hands. The couple of blocks to Skye’s school were brisk the cool air biting into his lungs on every inhale and sending a stream of mist out in front of him on every exhale.

Skye was waiting for him at the gate, huddled in close with her friends, all of their heads bent over something. Their excited chatter warmed the air, or at least warmed Phil. Seeing his daughter happy always did.

“Skye.”

Her head shot up at the sound of her name. “DAD!” She bounded away from her friends. “DAD DAD DAD!” She grabbed onto the sleeve of his coat and bounced up and down, jiggling his arm.

“What Skye? What?” He grinned down at her.

“Elise got a puppy! She said I can come over and see it? Can I? PLEASE?!” The puppy-dog eyes were a bit much, but they didn’t have any other plans.

“If her mom says it’s ok as well.” He had learnt from the first time that a kid saying it was ok and a parent saying it, were two very different things.

“Thanks Daddy.” She sent racing off. “HE SAID I CAN COME OVER!”

“That’s not… Whatever.” A quiet huff of laughter from the parent next to him had him smiling sheepishly.

“Selective hearing at its best.” The woman joked.

“Tell me about it. I’m pretty sure it’s hardwired into her. Excuse me.” He caught sight of Candice, Elise’s mother, over the other woman’s shoulder. “Candice!” He waved before she could get to the girls and get manipulated into taking a whole parcel of kids home.

“Elise invited Skye over. I wanted to check that it wasn’t just the girls getting carried away.” Of all of Skye’s friend’s parents, Candice was one of his least favourite. She had spent the first few years they knew each other, silently judging him for being a teen parent and single father, eventually she had gotten over it but was still cool towards him. That coolness didn’t transfer to Skye though and she had always been kind to the little girl.

“Skye is always welcome. If she wants she can stay the night and I can take them both to dance tomorrow?” Candice offered.

Skye was going to lose her mind, she loved sleepovers. 

“She would love that. I can drop some clothes off?” They lived a few blocks south of the school and it wouldn’t take long to go home and pack a bag.

As he knew from experience, the trip home for a bag was quick and the bag was met with a cacophony of happy yelling. The night was his own. Oh god, the night was his own. There wasn’t going to be any buffering between Clint and him. No avoiding the awkward conversation for Skye’s sake. 

He spent the afternoon distracting himself. First needlessly alphabetising the bookshelves by Author’s last name, and then deciding that was stupid and genre worked better and doing it all again. The back of the cupboards in the kitchen were his next victim, all of his equipment was pulled out and piled on the counters so that he could get in to the very back corners. 

He spent all afternoon and evening waiting for Clint’s voice, or laugh to ratchet up the nerves. He needn’t have worried. The night slowly ticked away with no sight of the golden man. By the time Linda was waving good night through the window, he had given up any hope of seeing him that night, maybe ever. He must have witnessed Phil hiding from him on Tuesday and was avoiding the whole place now.

Lying in bed that night, he decided he would have to do something about it. Even if he had irreparably damaged his friendship, Clint shouldn’t feel the need to avoid the café. He had been hurt by so many people by this point that Phil didn’t want to be another one, another person that non-verbally told him that he wasn’t welcome any more. Clint had never said as much, but Phil suspected he wasn’t happy in his security job, that his new co-workers hadn’t made him welcome and that the café was a source of safety for him. 

He would drop by tomorrow once the cakes were in the oven. Take a coffee and see if he could patch up the damage he had done. Having a plan allowed him to settle, his mind letting go of the guilt that had been eating at him for the last few days. The hope that he could salvage a friendship that had come to mean so much to him was a relief.

= + =

Phil was up with the sun the next morning. The pastries for the shop going in first, pear and ginger muffins, and red bean and raspberry pull-apart. They were flavours he was still playing with but the sweet berry and creamy red bean paste went amazingly together, and the heat of the ginger off-set the juicy pears. Once they were in the oven he moved on to the cake parts of the wedding cake, each tier slightly bigger than the last. An hour and a half after getting up, the cakes were in, the pastries for the shop were out and cooling and he got his first break of the day. Sitting in the almost empty shop with a muffin and coffee.

The cakes came out of the oven, four perfect golden sponges. Tipping them out onto racks to cool, he gathered a take-away mug of Clint’s preferred blend and one of each of the day’s pastries, unsure which the other man would want. Darting through the grey slush that filled the gutters and covered everything in muck, he was across the street and in the opposite building before the cafe’s door had closed behind him.

The walk up two floors was the most stressful walk he had ever made, with the exception of that day years ago when Ann was in labour. He hadn’t realised how much Clint had come to mean to him until the other man was gone. Standing outside the plain door with its peeling brown paint waiting for Clint to answer, Phil concentrated on pulling air into his lungs and then pushing it out. Counting through each inhale and exhale. Trying to keep his heart rate under control.

He knocked again.

Nothing. 

Pressing his ear against the door he couldn’t hear anything through the thin wood.

= + =

Skye skipped down the sidewalk. She had spent an awesome! night with Elise and her new puppy. They had huddled under the blankets with a torch and whispered secrets into the early morning. Finally succumbing to sleep they had both stumbled their way through the morning when Elise’s mom had shuffled them out of bed.

The whole family had sat down and eaten breakfast together. Pancakes with blueberries in the pancakes. Skye loved her daddy and couldn’t really imagine her life being any different, but sometimes it was lonely when he had to work. That hadn’t been as bad recently, Clint always spent Friday with her even if daddy was working and he was always fun. He listened when she talked about her books or dance or friends or school and never made her feel like she was being annoying like so many adults did. Not her daddy, he never made her feel like that, but others did. It made her sad sometimes, she just wanted to share the fun things in her life. Oh well.

After pancakes Mrs Patersen, Elise’s mom, had taken them back to school. It was weird being there on a Saturday, but they had an extra dance lesson because their recital was coming up and Miss Janet wanted them to do it in their pretty dresses. All of the parents were making a big deal about the Dress Rehearsal but Skye just thought it was the same as every other time they did it but she had to have her hair pinned back so much that it hurt and that just seemed silly. As usual the parents helping didn’t think it was as silly as she did, they thought it was Important. Adults thought lots of things were Important that she just thought was silly so maybe they were right when they told her she would understand when she was older. Even though Daddy was older and he often agreed with her that Important Adult things were silly.

The rehearsal had gone mostly smooth. John H tripped halfway through and split his lip and had blood everywhere but nothing else went wrong and Miss Janet dismissed them early because of it.

Mrs Patersen had been waiting to collect Elise and walk Skye home, so the three of them had set out. Mrs Patersen walking behind the two girls as they giggled over John H tripping over himself and getting hurt. It was an almost daily occurrence for the little boy, but he was always such a baby about it, didn’t he realise he wasn’t in second grade anymore? He was all grown up and in the third grade now, he needed to stop crying every time he got hurt.

At the door to the cafe Skye waved bye to Elise after saying a polite ‘thank you for having me’ to Mrs Patersen. Skipping through the cafe and around the counter, she waved or shouted a hello to the people she knew, hugged Ayana, the weekend barista, around the waist. The twenty-year old hugged her back before sending her on her way, she had work to do and Skye wanted to see her dad.

She thundered up the stairs, forgetting the rule about not running inside. She was wrangling her backpack back into submission as she pushed through the door into the apartment. The lack of greeting or clanking of pots and pans in the kitchen caught her attention. Her dad should have called a hello the second she crashed through the front door, quickly followed by a reminder that she shouldn’t have been running, and then an offer of whatever he was baking. Instead the apartment was cold and still. Her bag dropped to the floor as she stepped further into the eerie quiet.

“Dad?” She asked at just above a whisper, the oppressive atmosphere keeping her usual energy in check.

“Dad?” Skye called again, louder when the first time didn’t get a response.

A piece of paper fluttering on the table in a breeze that shouldn’t have been there was the only response. The cake she knew her dad was going to be working on was half constructed on the kitchen counter, the bottom three tiers in place but the fourth was missing. He would never leave in the middle of putting it together. Taking a closer look around the apartment, other things started to stand out, the open window that let out onto the fire escape, the cup that normally held her art supplies had been knocked over and the pencils and brushes were scattered across the floor.

The cup sat on the windowsill of the window that was open, maybe dad had needed some air and accidentally knocked it over when climbing outside. That made sense, he was out on the creaky metal stairs and couldn’t hear her calling over the sounds of the metal moving and the cars speeding past on the street below. She hurried across the short distance to the window, her stomach clenching uncomfortable even as she tried to tell herself she would stick her head outside and dad would be right there, leaning against the railing with a bright smile on his face. 

She flicked the waving, lacy curtain up and ducked under it. Sticking her head out, the clenching moved from her stomach to her heart. The stairs were as empty as the apartment had been. Bare, dull metal with a thin layer of condensation in the cold was all that was waiting for her. A splash of red on silver stood out. She climbed out to get a better look. Blood. There was fresh blood on the metal where there shouldn’t have been any.

“DAD?” Her voice was ripped away by the wind before it had a chance to reach her missing father.

She ran. Tripping through the open window back into the apartment, she caught herself on the window sill sending the already tipped over cup careening to the floor. She flew through the door, the heavy wood banging shut behind her, bouncing against the frame from the force of her push. Down and through the cafe, she didn’t hear Ayana calling out to her as she ran past, her mind focusing on getting to the one person she thought could help.

Dodging the cars and almost slipping on a patch of ice, she was lucky to get across the street alive. The lock on the front door was broken, she had to slow down for the first time to wiggle the handle in the right way for it to open. She was back up to speed by the time she hit the first landing, and was panting as she slipped on the next landing, trying to take the corner around the newel post too fast.

“CLINT!” She was yelling before she had gotten to his door. “CLINT! CLINT! CLINT!” She was battering the door with her fists as she yelled for him. He would be able to help, he was a secret agent and knew how to fight. He had a bow and arrow above his tv, only a secret agent used a bow and arrow. Or a superhero. He was someone who could help her dad.


	13. Feb 2014, New York

They kept Clint in medical for three days. Thursday was spent in and out of consciousness as they continued to pump him full of painkillers, sedatives, and antibiotics. The hallucinations and nausea from the painkillers made the day merge into a never ending nightmare. Friday morning, they stepped the morphine down a few levels and at lunch he removed the IV against medical advice. That landed him with an hour long lecture about the risk of infection from a grey haired doctor who looked like she was someone’s cookie baking grandmother but had a wicked tongue on her. Clint suspected she would be able to dress anyone down so efficiently that they ended the lecture feeling like a toddler who had been caught with their mouths stuffed full of cookies and with their hand in the cookie jar going back for more. The amusing image didn’t make the lecture any easier to take unfortunately.

After placidly sitting through the lectures, agreeing or not at all the right points, she left the IV out. Apparently, she had planned on taking it out that afternoon anyway and he had just beaten her to it by a few hours. He slept peacefully that night without drugs coursing through his veins.

At the ass crack of dawn on Saturday, not that he could tell as SHIELD medical didn’t have any windows and there wasn’t even a clock in his room, Jeremy, his nurse, woke him up and helped him get dressed. Bundled into a wheelchair, ‘it’s protocol Agent Barton I don’t care that there is nothing wrong with your legs’, they moved him to the physical therapy suite on the other end of the floor. A fun few hours of range of motion and nerve tests later, he was trembling and sweating with exertion and pain. His sadist PT was smiling though, all of his tests came back clean and they were now positive he would make a full recovery after some more rest.

He was walking out the front door of the bland office building that hid the agency at just after ten. His arm strapped tightly to his chest and a bag of antibiotics, that he would take, and painkillers, that he wouldn’t, clutched in his free hand. Once on the sidewalk, he stopped. He had the choice of taking the subway or flagging down a taxi. Normally he would already be pointing his feet to the closest station, the thought of paying for a cab making him cringe. But standing out in the crystal clear winter air, the thought of stuffing himself into a tin can with a hundred other people and having at least three people jostle his injured arm was too much. 

Flagging down a cab didn’t take long, even on a Saturday they tended to loiter in the business districts of the city. Giving the driver his address he closed his eyes and lent back, listening to the driver swear at the radio in Afrikaans. He got every few words, enough to understand the other man wasn’t happy with the sports results they were listening to.

Getting out of the car, he turned towards the cafe. Not moving towards it, just watching the people move around inside. He couldn't see Phil or Skye, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there working or sitting in the back corner working away or reading or talking about their week. Part of him yearned to cross the short distance and sink into the soft warmth of his armchair in the back and not move again until Phil kicked him out at the end of the day. But he also remembered the panic that had crossed the other man’s face on Wednesday and he didn’t have the energy to deal with whatever had caused it. With a sigh, he retreated into his own building. Slumping his way up the stairs, each tread taking everything in him to get up.

He shuffled across the landing to his door and almost fell through when he finally got the key to go into the fucking lock already! The couch was closer than the bed and he collapsed on it as soon as he got close enough to end up on it and not the floor. He jarred his arm falling onto the cushions but by the time he had breathed through the pain, he was asleep, the effort from the morning catching up on him and pulling him under.

Startling awake sometime later, he rolled off the couch simultaneously looking for cover and the threat that had woken him. He was still alone in his apartment. Nothing had moved or changed since he arrived home. A banging on the door a second later answered the question of why he was awake when he would have preferred not to be.

“CLINT!” A little girl’s voice called almost drowning out the banging which he realised was someone knocking repeatedly and violently on his door. “CLINT! CLINT”. It was Skye. Why was Skye at his door? And why did she sound so upset? Skye should never sound upset. “CLINT!” Each time she called his name, her voice sounded more desperate and broken.

He grunted with effort when he pushed himself off the floor. Stumbling to the door he flung it open. “Skye? What’s wrong? Are you okay? Where’s your dad?” He stuck his head out into the hallway, looking for Phil, but she was alone.

“I don’t know! He’s gone and there was blood and I don’t know what to do!” She cried, throwing herself at him. Her arms wrapped around his middle and she buried her face in his stomach, the end of her sentence was muffled in the fabric of his sweatshirt. 

“Okay, okay. Take a breath and tell me what happened.” He pushed her away a little bit, just enough that he could kneel down and meet her eye. 

Scrubbing a hand across her eyes, she leant into the hand he left on her shoulder. “I got home from, from dance. And, and he wasn’t there.” She hiccuped through it.

“Could he have been in the shop? Maybe you didn’t see him?” Clint didn’t want to think that anything had happened to Phil. There was nothing in the other man’s life that would put him in danger. Nothing but Clint himself.

“NO! He’s gone! The window was open and there was blood on the fire escape.” She stood straighter, fire coming into her eyes and voice as she insisted that something had happened to her dad.

“Okay. I believe you. Come on. Let’s go have a look to see if we can find anything.” He ducked back inside his own apartment quickly, stuffing his phone in his pocket and his personal pistol into his waistband where Skye wouldn’t be able to see it. He looked at the bow above his tv for a second, regretting that he couldn’t bring it with him, the smooth wood under his fingers would have centred him like nothing else, but with one arm out of commission he wouldn’t be able to use it, and it wasn’t very covert.

He let himself be dragged across the road, only stopping the little girl’s headlong rush when going across the road. He stopped them to allow a city bus to pass before walking them across. At the cafe door, he slowed her down again. 

“Let me do the talking.” He ordered before going into the busy shop.

“SKYE! Are you okay?” Ayana hurried out from behind the counter, checking Skye over for injury or illness.

“She’s okay, just got startled by a spider.” Clint lied easily. He didn’t know her as well as the other staff, generally she worked at times that he didn’t come in and they had only crossed paths a few times.

It’s the right play, her face does a complicated manoeuvre that he takes to be her disgust at the thought of marauding spiders and lets them pass. From there, they are able to slip into the kitchen and then Skye was hurrying them up the stairs again. The apartment door was open, in her rushed exit she hadn’t closed or locked the door. He stopped her before she could walk back in.

“Stay here.” He pointed at the floor of the hallway to emphasize his point.

Silently, she agreed.

Silently, he entered the empty main room. Once out of Skye’s sight, he drew his weapon, keeping it out of sight beside his leg but ready if he needed it. Sweeping the four rooms that made up the small home took him 90 seconds even checking in the closets and under Skye’s bed, there wasn’t room for anyone to hide under Phil’s. Having confirmed that the apartment was safe, he flicked the safety back on, put his pistol away, and collected Skye from the hallway. 

“Where did you see the blood?” He asked Skye.

Wordlessly she pointed at the open kitchen window. Following her direction, he moved across the hardwood floor on silent feet. The lacy curtains that obscured people’s view into the room without stopping the winter sun, were waving softly in the light breeze. Snagging a piece of what was probably Skye’s hair ribbon, he tied them out of the way. He didn’t want to climb out onto the fire escape in case something had actually happened and he disturbed a clue that would help him find Phil.

The dark red of almost dried blood stood out starkly against the dull metal of the stairs. A splash of colour where there shouldn’t have been any. Further down on the stairs, a matte black mark looked like rubber from combat boots that had scuffed against the edge of the stairs. Nothing else stood out.

Back inside, he crouched in front of Skye. “I’m sorry. I think you are right, but I’m going to find him ok.” He waited for her to nod in understanding, he needed her to trust him. “I’m going to call a friend, she can help.” Again he waited for her wordless nod. Once he had it he stood up and stepped away, scrabbling to get his phone out of his pocket and dial it one handed. Cursing under his breath the whole time. Finally, he got the number he wanted into the phone and waited for the other end to pick up.

“Clint! I hadn’t realised they had discharged you, I was just looking for you in Medical.” Jemma launched right into chattering at him.

“Jemma. Jemma!” He broke in impatiently.

“Yes? Oh, sorry. I’ll be quiet.” She finally lapsed into silence.

“I need your help. Can you get a kit and get to the coffee shop we met at the other week?” He knew it was a lot to ask, taking SHIELD equipment out without permission was a chargeable offence, so much of their technology was so far above Top Secret that DARPA wished they could get a glimpse of a screwdriver from the SHIELD labs.

“What’s happened?” Even as she asked, he could hear her rifling through her lab and clicking things into place in her field kit. 

“Phil’s missing.” He had told her about making friends with the baker with pretty blue eyes, her words not his. She knew how important the other man and his daughter had become to him in the months since he had moved to New York.

The sound of her movements increased. Blessedly quickly, the snap of the metal clips closing the case echoed down the line. “It is probably going to take a half hour to get to you. I’m so sorry Clint.” Her voice was breathier than normal as she ran through the corridors of SHIELD, probably weaving in and out of the few people on the science floor on a Saturday afternoon.

“I know. I’ll be waiting.” He hung up. Let her concentrate on getting here and he could concentrate on Skye. He tried to muster a smile but he knew it came out more like a grimace. “Let’s get changed and wait downstairs.” From the cafe’s kitchen, they would be able to watch both entrances into the building in case this was all a big misunderstanding, god please let it be a misunderstanding, and they wouldn’t disturb anything that could help.

Clint felt every second of the 35 minutes and 54 seconds that it took Jemma to get from Midtown Manhattan to Bed-Stuy. Every second was a second longer that Phil wasn’t walking through the door and rambling about traffic on the way back from picking up dye for the icing or something stupid. Every second was watching the hope slip a little bit more from Skye’s face, being overtaken by the worry and fear that she would be alone in the world. Every second was realising that he really fucking needed to talk to Phil.

Red-faced and wind swept, Jemma crashed through the front door of the cafe, people scattering as she barrelled through. Clint was on his feet and point in the direction of the stairs before she got to him. He followed in her wake, and Skye followed in his. She slowed down at the top of the stairs and stopped between the apartment doors.

“The one on the left.” Clint told her.

Dropping to her knees she pushed the door open but made no move to enter. Fiddling with her case, she finally fist pumped. Standing, the sound of multiple tiny engines whirring to life followed her. Then six machines no bigger than the palm of his hand launch out of the opened case. Jemma focused on the tablet she had pulled from the case and ignored the drones. The fascination of being faced with new tech had Skye abandoning her worry for a little and creeping on tiptoes to peer through the open door. The six machines had spread out evenly and were scanning the room. Clint sidled up behind the height challenged scientist and watched over her shoulder as she worked. Flicking through data and screens almost too fast for him to follow, he gathered that she wasn’t finding much. 

As he continued to unintentionally loom over her, Jemma’s shoulders tightened and her tapping on the screen became more uneven.

“Sorry.” He murmured as he stepped back. Let her work, he grumbled to himself. That was why he had called her in the first place and if she missed a clue that would tell them where Phil was because of him, he would never forgive himself.

Jemma hummed in a ‘I might have just found something but want to make sure before I get your hopes up’ kind of way, when the metal snick of a gun cocking had Clint spinning to put himself between Skye, Jemm, and the threat. He also had his own gun pointed down range before he had had turned fully.

“Don’t move.” Voice icy, Tasha was standing at the end of the hallway. Her eyes swept over Clint with his familiar grip on his weapon, and Jemma with the advanced tablet clutched in front of her chest. “What are you doing?” She growled.

“Phil’s missing.” Clint lowered his gun but kept it out, trying to put it away and bring it out again one handed would slow him down too much, but he didn’t think Tasha was going to hurt them, she was just protecting the people she loved. Which he understood.

Instantly her demeanour morphed from frozen rage, to warm fear. “Skye?”

“I’m ok Tasha.” The little girl lent around Clint and waved.

“Do you know who took him?” Tasha disappeared her own gun into her clothes and stepped forward. Skye met her halfway, launching herself at her neighbour and hid her face in Tasha’s stomach.

Clint and Jemma turned away, giving them a second to themselves. Jemma went back to work on that maybe something she had found and Clint continued to try to not hover.

“The blood isn’t Phil’s.”

Clint cringed when Jemma just announced that there was blood all willy-nilly and shit.

“Blood? What blood?” At some point when Clint hadn’t been paying attention, which if asked he would have told you he had been the whole time but apparently Phil’s neighbour was a ghost or something, Natasha had moved to stand just out of Clint’s peripheral vision.

“On the fire stairs.” Skye whispered.

“How do you know?” Clint asked at the same time.

“It’s the wrong type. Phil’s is O negative. The blood is A posit…” She broke off in the middle of her sentence, tapping furiously at the screen. “Clint.” She held it out to him.

Sweeping his eyes quickly over the information she had pulled up, all he could do was swear catching himself just enough to do it in Arabic in deference to Skye watching and listening closely from Tasha’s side.

“Enough of this.” Tasha broke into his thoughts. She dumped her bag and dug out a heavy looking phone, swiping into it. 

“Try and figure out who.” Clint passed the tablet back to Jemma.

“DNA will take too long. I’m sorry Clint.” She took the tablet back but allowed it to hang beside her.

Whoever had left the blood was SHIELD. Every single person employed by SHIELD, from the Director to the mail guy, were tagged for lack of a better word. Once a year a unique, inert protein was injected. It allowed the agency to identify their own quickly without having to run full DNA panels which often took too long. With a bit of time and her proper lab she could easily find out whose it was, but Clint knew they didn’t have that sort of time. Phil had already been missing for at least an hour, probably more.

“He’s heading North on the Palisades Interstate Parkway. Just past Mount Ivy.” Tasha said, looking up from her phone.

All of them turned to look at her. Actual hope was shining from Skye’s eyes for the first time since she had tried to act as a human battering ram on Clint’s door. Jemma hovered between interest and confusion about how the other woman had come to that conclusion. While Clint was downright incredulous.

Tasha didn’t pay Clint or Jemma any mind, focusing on Skye instead. “I will get him back Solnyshko but you need to stay here.” She sharp eyes stayed on Skye until she nodded and then the red head was herding the little girl into her apartment.

“I’ll stay with her.” Jemma’s soft voice broke the tension. She wouldn’t be any use in a firefight. “My car is outside.” She held the keys out, which Tasha snagged and the two were gone, leaving Jemma alone in the hallway.

= + =

Tasha drove. At least she was the one behind the wheel. The trip through the city was a blur of honked horns, and barely avoided collisions. Sweeping up onto the East side of Manhattan and racing up the island, Clint was reminded of Nascar. The rush of the speed and multiple close brushes had him laughing, he had missed the adrenalin that came with putting himself in monumentally stupid, life threatening situations.

Tasha threw him an incredulous eyebrow lift at the sound.

“You are crazy.” She muttered.

“Maybe, but life is more fun that way.” He continued to laugh, holding on to the door as she swerved around a stopped bus.

Getting himself under control, he dug his phone out of his back pocket, jarring his strapped arm as he did it. “Son of a fucking bitch.” He was left gasping for breath by the spike of white hot pain that shot through the damaged limb.

“Barton?” Fury’s voice was tinny and far away on the phone he had dropped in his lap when he had knocked his arm. “I swear to god, if you butt dialled me I will send your skinny white ass to Antarctica.”

“I’m here, sorry, I’m here.” Clint scrambled to pick up the phone. “I need your help.”

“Why are you leaving the city?” Fury asked, the tapping of a keyboard a counterpoint to his words.

“One of my friends has been kidnapped. He’s heading north out of the city on the Palisades Interstate.”

“Friend.” Fury’s response threw Clint a little. What?

“What?” He couldn’t help but ask.

“You only have one friend Barton, the baker, Phil right?”

Clint could hear the smile in Fury’s voice. Fucker

“Fuck you. You gonna help or not?” He grumbled, ignoring the question.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Tasha’s smirk. She could hear everything Fury was saying, the other man’s gravelly voice carrying in the otherwise silent car.

“Shut up.” He grumbled at her as he waited for his boss’ answer.

“Of course I’ll fucking help. I’ll meet you in Mount Ivy.” Fury hung up before Clint could respond. He wasn’t exactly big on the pleasantries.

What should have been an hour and a half drive along a boring concrete stripe through the landscape, only took Tasha and her psychotic driving an hour. They were pulling off the parkway into the little town mid-afternoon.

“The next right.” Clint pointed at the turn in front of them, Fury had texted only ten minutes ago with co-ordinates. The turn took them away from town rather than into it, each road Tasha turned down was smaller than the last. The final turn, only a few meters from the co-ordinates was little more than dirt. A large field with a quin jet idling in the middle of it opened out as they drifted around a small copse of trees.

Fury was waiting at the base of the lowered ramp, black leather trench flapping in the wind and grimace on his face.

“No.” Fury said the moment Clint had climbed out of the car. “Can you even shoot?”

“Fuck you.” Clint smiled as he sauntered past. He wasn’t going to be left behind and the only thing that would affect his aim was his death. Tasha was his new shadow, going almost unnoticed in the face of Clint and Fury’s almost argument.

Fury followed them into the belly of the plane, bitching the whole way. “Fucking jarhead hotshot. Think you’re better than us. Never could work with the Marines.”

They were in the air without any of the SHIELD team commenting on the extra passenger. The plane didn’t get anywhere close to cruising altitude when they started descending again. Flying low over the forest, bare tree tops scratching against their underbelly, they approached a set of cabins that looked like they hadn’t seen a new nail or layer of paint since Fury was Clint’s age.

No one was outside, the only sign of life a single black sedan parked next to the first building. Hovering over the clearing, a scan on multiple frequencies popped up on the screens at the front of the cargo area.

“The first building is shielded, none of the other buildings have anything interesting.” Agent Kassel summarised. “We can see a little through the shielding, just enough to see that there isn’t anything on the ground but there is a shaft going down, but not how deep it is or if there is anyone below.”

“We’re going in blind people. This is off-book, volunteer only.” Fury stood, checking the holsters and the pistols therein.

Not a single person responded, all of them quietly checking equipment and gear. Making sure they were ready for what was to come. The smile on Fury’s face was positively vicious.

“Let’s do this.”

Setting down, the ramp was already down when the wheels touched dirt, and the Agents plus Tasha were streaming out of the plane. Two of them peeled off to sweep and security the perimeter, they would have aerial help once the quinjet was in the air again. Fury, Clint, Tasha and the other three agents that Clint didn’t know sprinted across the short distance to the building and pressed themselves against the wood, three on each side of the only door in.

Fury motioned them in one after another with military hand signals. There probably wasn’t a chance they still had the element of surprise, but on the off chance that they did, why give it up now.

Just like the scan had said, they didn’t find anyone on the ground floor. A locked door to the basement, or whatever was below them, was the first sign of security. Anonymous Agent one, Clint only sort of wished he knew their names they had volunteered to help him after all, inserted a couple of lock picks and had the door open almost as quickly as Clint could have done it if he had the use of both hands. Maybe he would offer a lesson as a thank you if they both survived the day.

A small landing was on the other side and then the metal doors of an elevator. Anonymous Agents two and three, swept across the room and had the doors pried open in seconds. Securing rappelling lines to the wall with a piece of nifty SHIELD tech Clint hadn’t seen before, they were throwing themselves into the abyss of the elevator shaft in no time.

With a soft thump, they landed on the roof of the elevator car. Fury levered open the roof hatch. Clint crouched next to him, gun drawn, he put down the two men below without alerting them, or anyone else, to the SHIELD team above their heads.

Beyond the elevator, the corridor ran in two directions. Raw concrete and metal pipes with bare bulbs on the wall over fifteen feet. Clint, Tasha and AA three went left and Fury, AA one and two went right. At the first intersection they came to Tasha went one way and Clint and AA three went the other. Behind him, Clint heard the pop of gun fire, Tasha had found someone. Ahead, Clint was firing before he had realised there was someone to shoot at. AA three’s trigger response was slower. Four bodies thudded to the ground.

“Clear.” Tasha called, just loud enough for Clint to hear her. She ghosted back to his side and they started moving again. Checking each room they came across. Empty room, after empty room. Clint just wanted Phil found, although a tiny part of his brain that he was ashamed of wanted to find him himself. He wanted to be the one to pull Phil out of the bunker.

God, just let him be alive. Clint prayed for the first time in longer than he could remember. They came to a t-intersection. Neither direction indicated which they should choose.

“Tasha? Any idea?” Clint quietly asked the woman at his side.

She cast her eyes down each length of bare hallway. Shaking her head, she stayed silent, letting him decide which way to go.

For no reason he could determine, he chose. “Left.” The three of them turned as one and kept moving. Foot after foot of concrete, empty room after empty room. With each step, a little bit more of his hope was chipped away until only the hardened core of stubborn determination was left. Twenty feet in front of them, a door opened, three men were about to step into the corridor. They were dead before their feet could land outside of the doorway.

Clint and Tasha rushed the door, AA three stayed at their back, protecting their exit. A gun emerged from the doorway at the same time they reached the door. Rounding the slab of wood, they fired simultaneously dropping another goon. The door behind the three dead was different from any of the others they had come across. Two tables with ten chairs each ran along each side of the long room. A single door was on the other end of the room. It was metal, in stark contrast to the wooden doors in the rest of the complex. Two heavy bolts held it closed. A spark of hope lit in the middle of the core of stubbornness left in Clint’s heart, healing one of the chips in his hope.

“Tasha.” Clint whispered.

“I know.” She whispered back without him having to explain. She was right there with him balancing on a tightrope of hope and dread. Hoping that Phil was behind that door, but dread that he would be and the state he would be in. They still didn’t know who had taken him, if the people holding the innocent baker were the type to torture a hostage.

Tasha threw the door open. Clint entered the room gun first. He saw everything in the ten by ten foot room in slow motion. Four men standing over a fifth in a metal chair. Cuffs held the fifth man to the chair. Blood and bruises mottled every bit of visible skin. One of the standing men was spattered in blood all the way up to his elbows, knuckles split from hitting something again and again.

The man in the chair was Phil.

Blue eyes looked out blearily from a blood covered face.

The four men were no-longer standing. Clint would never remembering pulling the trigger and putting down those four men. All he would remember was the lack of recognition in Phil’s eyes as the other man watched him kill. Later, Phil would tell him that he hadn’t even seen Clint’s face. That the bad concussion had him seeing triple and all of the versions of Clint standing in front of him had been out of focus. A part of Clint would always wonder if it was the first time Phil really saw Clint and it was that that he didn’t recognise. That the killer in Clint was so far removed from Phil’s experiences that his mind couldn’t reconcile it with the man he had gotten to know over months and countless cups of coffee.

“O Brat, posmotri na sebya.” Tasha followed Clint into the room. Kneeling next to Phil, she gently laid her hand against his cheek.

“Tasha?” Phil’s voice was rough. Broken from screaming in pain.

His hands twitched as he tried to reach out to her, a safe, familiar port in the storm. The movement drew attention from his bloody face, to his ruined hands. Four fingers on one hand on two on the other were missing nails, and at least three of his fingers were broken. One finger was pointing almost 90 degrees from the rest.

“It’s me Phil. We are going to get you out of here.” Tasha continued to talk to him as she picked the locks on the cuffs and started on dressing the worst of his injuries. Telling him that Skye was safe at home and that she had had a good time on her sleep over. Talking about her latest research trip. As she worked Clint retreated from the gory scene. He had seen worse, that last mission with the Marines would always be a hard one to beat. But seeing a person he loved in such rough shape was more than he could take.

Re-joining AA three in the hallway, he gave a quick update and then moved back down the corridor to the intersection and then began sweeping the right branch. Making sure there wouldn’t be anyone snapping at their heels when they were evac-ing Phil.

Three more thugs were put down with extreme prejudice. Turning a corner instinct and long years of trigger discipline being beaten in to him, saved his and AA two’s lives.

“Friendly, Friendly.” Clint called from where he had ducked back behind a corner.

“Come on our Barton.” Clint could hear the laugh in Fury’s voice. “You find your boy?” His voice was dead serious when he spoke again. As much as he would tease his Probie, he would never make light of a civilian being in the line of fire.

A knot lodged in Clint’s throat and all he could do was nod. AA two had turned his back on Fury and Clint, and the sniper could only be grateful for it. The less people that saw his weakness the better. Fury read the complex mix of happiness and devastation on Clint’s face, he saw that they had found Phil alive but that the other man was in bad shape. He knew that it was going to be a long road back for the baker and the archer. But Fury knew the strength that both men had at their core, he had checked out the baker when his probie began spending time with him. They would come out the other end of this a bit battered but okay.

“We found the mole. The extra attention after San Fran tipped our hand. They took Mr Coulson to shut you down. Agent Park has him in custody.” Fury told him. It was over. Phil was safe and Clint could actually have the clean start he should have been given the first time with SHIELD.

“Who?” The single word covered so many questions. Who had been trading SHIELD secrets? Who was behind the suffering of his best friend? Who was about to die at the end of Clint’s weapon.

“Doctor William Foster.” Fury answered the question.

Shit. Jemma’s mentor. Her friend. He had been secretly rooting for Garrett to be the leak. 

Fuck.

Is that what had tipped him off?

Had Clint not being as careful when watching him after Jemma narrowed it down, because he hadn’t wanted to believe it was him? Was Clint’s responsibility for Phil being taken even greater than he had thought? How would he ever be able to look Phil in the eye again? Nothing in this world would pay back the debt he owed.

“I’ll kill him.” Clint growled.

Trying to storm passed Fury, a tight hand around his right bicep stopped him.

“No you won’t. Foster is coming back to SHIELD with us. We need to know who he has been selling to. After I’ll toss his worthless ass down the deepest hole I can find and leave him there. But you aren’t doing shit. You don’t talk to him, you don’t go near him. Agent Davis go back to Park and get Foster topside.” Fury ordered the other agent without breaking eye contact with Clint. He was deadly serious about keeping the archer away from the mole.

“Yes sir.” Agent Davis hurried down the hallway. Leaving the two men in stony silence.

“I’m fucking serious Barton. You don’t go near him.” Fury eased his grip on Clint’s arm. Still holding on, ready to grab him again, but loosening his grip enough that Clint could pull away if he wanted. Which he did.

Ripping his arm out of Fury’s hold, he took a step back, his face thunderous. “Fuck you sir.” He spat. “He should pay for what he did. They fucking tortured him. Because he knew me. Not because of anything he did.” Clint was screaming by the end, panting with the force of the words.

Tension sat heavily in the small corridor. Fury an immovable force on one side. Clint an ineffectual hurricane of anger and unfulfilled retribution on the other.

“Fuck you.” Clint said again, no force behind the words just exhaustion and pain.

Stalking away, he seethed silently. If he knew what was good for him, Fury wouldn’t follow. With the sting of imagined betrayal burrowed under his skin, Clint thought that if he saw his boss any time soon there was a non-zero chance he would punch him in the fucking face.

Clint paused in the doorway between the corridor and the room leading to where Tasha and Phil were. Unable to continue forward or go back. 

He wanted to know how the other man was, but couldn’t face him. Frozen. He stood there and listened to the low murmur of conversation and short gasps of pain issuing from behind the half closed door at the other end of the room. It was hearing his name in Phil’s low voice that shocked his body into movement again. He needed to know what Phil was saying about him, as masochistic as it was he needed to know how much hatred he was going to see if he was ever able to be in the same room as the other man again.

“He’s fine. Phil, he is fine.” Tasha’s voice was slightly strained, the white lie sitting awkwardly on her tongue. Clint wasn’t fine, his left arm was still in bad shape even if he couldn’t feel it. But how could she explain that to the delirious man bleeding on herleather jacket? Phil needed to know that Clint hadn’t been hurt coming for him, that any damage the younger man had would heal.

“Wher’s he?” Phil’s voice was slurred with exhaustion and pain.

“Making sure we are safe.” Tasha soothed. “Tell me about the cake you were working on?” The question was at odds with the previous topic.

Concussion, Clint realised. She was trying to keep him talking. Phil needed medical attention, not Clint eavesdropping and standing around uselessly. Time to get them out of here, the facility was secure and they could call for back up if the others hadn’t already.

Things happened in a whirlwind once Clint walked back out into the corridor. Fury and AA three were at the next intersection, talking in hushed tones. AA three hurried off just as Clint was approaching, moving quickly towards the entrance.

“We’ll need a medic at least before we can move him.” Clint spoke before Fury could, he didn’t want to hear it. They could hash out their own problems later.

“Martinez is going to meet a full med-team.”

Clint assumed Martinez was AA three and nodded his understanding. They weren’t alone long before what seemed like a full battalion of people were bearing down on them. Weapons and medical equipment were in equal supply amongst the newcomers. With the situation being taken care of, he left. Ghosting down the side of the group.

The elevator doors were closing as he slipped inside. He was alone on the ride to the surface. A scowl, his badge, and the pistol on his hip was enough to get everyone topside to leave him alone. Within seconds, he had the sedan they had seen from the air hotwired and was on his way back to the city.

The hours in the car passed in a blurr. Green trees and fields merged into suburbia. Where he should have continued into the high-rises of the island, he turned right and stayed in the smaller residential areas that seemed to merge one city into another, passing New York and then Philadelphia, not really thinking about where he was going. Into the deepening night he drove.

Only as he pulled up in front of the dark two story in Silver Springs, Maryland did he came back to himself. In his mindless fear, and desperation he had gone to his family. He didn’t remember making the decision to come here, and the four and a half hour drive was nothing more than haze in his memory, but sitting in front of the meticulously cared for house, he knew his brother’s place was where he needed to be. 

There was no movement inside. Barney might not even be there, but Vanessa would be. His ex-acrobat, current high school teacher sister-in-law would be home. Barney hadn’t mentioned any upcoming weekend trips last time they had talked and it was still the school term so she wouldn’t have gone out of town to visit her own family.

Clint stumbled as he got out of the car, his body had stiffened up on the long drive. Muscles still overused from the Canary Islands and then further stressed in the bunker protested every little movement. Stiffness from inactivity was nothing new, he had spent years in sniper nests around the world after all. Shaking the three of his limbs that he could and then clenching and releasing each muscle in turn, starting from his toes and working his way up, he was finally able to walk without landing on his face.

A single light had turned on and the door was opened by the time he got there, the large form of his brother blocking a lot of the light. Up the two steps and into the open arms waiting for him, he let it all go. The bone shattering fear let loose in silent sobs, soaking the thin tee shirt Barney was wearing. His brother took it all without a word, patiently waiting for Clint to get himself under control.

When he had slowed to a hiccupping gasp, Barney drew him into the house, keeping a warm arm around his shoulders. Barney had never seen his little brother this distraught and it was taking everything in him to not ask. To give Clint the time to gather up what he had left. In the stark light of the hallway, the dark circles of bone deep exhaustion, and russet red of dried blood jumped out at him. Whatever the story was, he wasn’t going to get it tonight.

“Come on. Shower and bed.” Barney led Clint up the stairs, the arm around his shoulders the only thing keeping Clint upright.


	14. Feb 2014, New York

Barney and Vanessa were puttering around the ground floor of the house when Clint got up the next morning. Barney was in the kitchen chopping industrial quantities of vegetables, neither of the brothers had ever learnt how to downsize their cooking after learning to feed everyone in the circus. Vanessa was at the dining room table, coffee at one elbow and papers spread across the wood in front of her. Grading Clint assumed from the red pen she was wielding liberally. 

Clint had nothing left, the last of his energy having been used to get down the stairs and into the kitchen. Dropping into the first chair he came to, he folded his right arm onto the table and nestled his head in the dark crevice made by his elbow. The conversation consisting entirely of head nods and eyebrows was palpable.

Vanessa won.

Barney’s large presence crossed the room and a full mug of coffee doctored with Clint’s preferred amount of milk and sugar was carefully placed on the table beside him. They didn’t break the unseasy quiet. Giving him the space he needed without the distance he feared.

The coffee cooled beside him, untouched.

Eventually, Vanessa gathered up her papers. Instead of drifting out into the garden like she normally would have, the half-read novel from her bedside table appeared and she sat back down at the table with a new cup of coffee. Barney looked at her askance, the novel generally never left the bedroom sometimes staying there for months before she finished it and a new one appeared. She slanted a look at Clint’s unmoving form and then proceeded to ignore him.

At lunch time, Barney replaced the cold coffee with an egg salad sandwich. That to went ignored.

The afternoon ticked by the same fashion. Barney finished preparing the food they would be eating for the week and joined Clint and Vanessa at the table a book of sudoku in hand. As the weak winter sun set, Barney got up to plate dinner. If Clint didn’t respond to the food, he decided to force the issue. He needed to eat, even if he didn’t want to talk about whatever had brought him to their door in the dead of night.

Barney swapped the sandwich for a steaming bowl of chili. He and Vanessa were half way through their meal when a sharp knock at the door sounded. They exchanged a quick glance, seeing if the other was expecting anyone. At Barney’s headshake, Vanessa went to answer it. The sound of two voices floated into the room, too distant to hear what they were saying.

It was the sound of two sets of footsteps coming back towards them that finally had Clint reacting. Not much, but some. A single, red rimmed, ice blue eye peaked up from where it had been nestled all day.

Vanessa stepped into the room, a tiny redhead that Barney had never seen before half a step behind her. At the sight of her, Clint groaned and tried to hide again. He was sure that if Clint’s left arm wasn’t strapped to his body, it would be over his head, another layer of protection. It was a position that Barney hadn’t seen in almost two decades. Not since their parents had gone out on that rainy night that changed everything.

“Clinton Barton! What the fuck were you thinking?” An Eastern European accent tinged the angry words.

“You’re not here.” Clint’s mumbled words were muffled by his prone position.

Whatever he was going to mutter next was cut off with a sharp yelp. The woman had darted forward, grabbed his ear and twisted. Hard.

That got him moving. Flailing off his chair at the sudden attack, he yanked his ear out of her grasp, backpedalled a couple of steps to put some distance between them. “What the fuck?” His free hand clapped over his abused ear. 

“You left!”

“Of course I fucking left! What the hell else was I supposed to do? Sit beside his hospital bed and act as if I wasn’t the only reason he was there?” Clint exploded. Storming across the room to use his height advantage to loom over the woman. “That he didn’t almost bleed out because he was my friend? That it wasn’t pure luck that Skye wasn’t taken right along with him? For fuck’s sake Tasha, what was I meant to do.” He was screaming by the end. 

“Yes.” Tasha said quietly, not flinching in the face of his rage. “Because it wasn’t your fault. It was Foster’s. He didn’t almost bleed out. And it wasn’t luck that Skye wasn’t taken, if they wanted her, they would have taken here.” She calmly ripped each of his points apart.

As she spoke, the steam leaked out of Clint. The fight going out of him. He sat heavily in the chair that Vanessa had left out when she went to answer the door.

“Clint, he’s asking for you.” Her voice was kind and the accent had evaporated with her anger. “Come back with me.”

“I can’t. I can’t face him.” He whispered, staring at his hand where it rested in his lap.

Barney could hear the struggle to hold back the tears. He didn’t think any of the others could. On silent feet Tasha was across the room and crouching beside Clint.

“He wants to see you. Wants to know you are ok. If that’s all you can do fine, but you owe him that at least.” She spoke softly at the start but her voice hardened at the end. 

“Just that.” Clint met her eye, making sure she knew how serious he was. He would go and then she would let him leave again.

“Ok.” She was moving even as she spoke. 

As quickly as she had arrived, she was gone again. Clint was slower off the mark, the reluctance he was feeling at leaving written in every line of his body.

Barney stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll be here after, if you want to come back. You know where the spare key is.” He pulled him into a hug. Holding on tight, trying to give some of his strength to his brother.

Vanessa was waiting for her own hug when they separated. Stepping back, she swept up the tupperware she had put together while Tasha and Clint had been talking and handed it over. The couple walked Clint to the door, keeping close trying to offer what comfort they could.

“Oh.” Clint stopped on their front porch. “Sorry about the sort of stolen car.” Then he was gone.

“Wait? Sort of stolen?” Barney shouted after him, too late to get an answer.

At his side, Vanessa started laughing. The interactions of the Barton boys was always able to bring the mood up, eventually.

= + =

The drive was much, much shorter than Clint expected. Why he thought they would be driving all the way back to New York, he didn’t know, but Tasha turned off the parkway almost as soon as she got on it.

A small airfield opened up in front of them. A cessna idling on the runway.

“Move it.” Tasha ordered as she got out the car, striding across the tarmac.

He scrambled out, leaving the door swinging open behind him as he rushed to catch up. The glare she had gifted him with after making her wait at Barney’s had been enough for one lifetime, thank you very much. He was on her heels by the time they were climbing into the plane. Wordlessly she got them in the air. The trip that had taken him four hours to drive the night before, took less than half that to fly.

Tasha put them down in the dark, at a private field, at least Clint assumed it was a private field based on the plethora of high-end private jets he could see, in Staten Island. The silence continued as she led him from the plane to a waiting car and then drove them into the city. Unerringly she shot through traffic to head quarters in Midtown.

Pulling up in the no-stop zone in front of the office building, she left the car where she stopped. She didn’t stop to check whether he was following, expecting that after going all that way to collect him, he would continue following. Which he did. Damn her.

He followed her in the front door of the building. Past security, into the elevator and stood next to her, up nine floors to the hospital level of medical. The elevator doors opened on the people going about their normal routine. Not screaming or yelling or crying. Just a team of professionals doing what they did with the sort of badass competency that working for SHIELD demanded.

Down one corridor and then another he followed her. Deeper into the building. A little girl’s shout was the first indication they were close to their destination.

“CLINT!” Skye came streaking down the corridor towards him, arms up and jumping to hug him when he was close enough.

Just in time, he knelt and caught her. She would have hit his injured arm if he hadn’t

“Oomph. It’s ok. I’ve got you.” He mumbled into her hair, holding her tight.

“He’s so hurt.” She cried into his shoulder.

“I know. But he will get better. I promise.”

“Come Solnyshko. Let Clint see your Dad.” Tasha carefully peeled Skye off of him, letting Clint clamber to his feet again.

Fury was standing at the other end of the hallway, watching the exchange an unreadable expression on his face.

“Agent Barton.” His voice was dangerously even. “Good of you to join us.”

“Sir.” Clint greeted. He knew Fury was looking for an apology, or at least an explanation, but he wasn’t going to get one. 

“You were AWOL. I should be throwing you in the Brig for that.” The empty threat was clear, if he was going to throw Clint in the brig, he would have already done it. The order would have been waiting at the door with a couple of armed guards.

“All due respect, fuck you sir.” Clint threw back. He had been on leave, he was still technically on leave. SHIELD wouldn’t really care about the technicalities, but it was worth bringing up. Sidestepping Fury, Clint finally entered the hospital room Phil was in.

A dizzying number of machines were beeping and buzzing away around the only bed in the room. Over starched white sheets almost matched the washed out skin tone of the man under them. Lacking his usual blush of health, he looked drawn and old. The pain that high doses of pain meds didn’t quite dispel pulling at him even in sleep, mixed with blood loss that they were only just starting to replace. The multiple bags of blood and saline snaking into his arms told Clint he had been right thinking Phil had nearly bled out, no matter what Tasha said.

“God, Phil.” Clint whispered at the sight of him. “I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry.”

There wasn’t a single place to rest a hand that wasn’t bruised or swaddled in thick bandages. Clint stood beside the bed looking down at the sleeping man for a long time. The crash of a metal tray being knocked to the floor a few rooms down, startled him out of his daze. He knew what he had to do. He couldn’t let this happen again. Not to Phil, or Barney, or Vanessa, or Skye. He needed to keep his family safe.

Turning to leave, he finally saw Fury and Tasha standing in the doorway watching him watch Phil.

“I’m leaving SHIELD.” Clint told Fury. His voice even, no doubt about what he was saying.

“What? Why? You’ve finally been accepted by these mother fuckers and you want to quit? You can make a difference here Barton.” Fury growled, his single eye narrowed in annoyance. After the months he had put into the man in front of him, he was just going to walk away? Not fucking likely.

“And what? Next time I piss someone off, they don't just torture the man I love, they kill him? No! Fuck you!” Clint roared. The anger that had pushed back the fear and pain broke. All of it coming out at his boss in a torrent of rage.

“Love me?” Phil slurred from the bed next to them, having woken up unnoticed by the two arguing men.

“Phil!” Instantly, Clint forgot about Fury glowering at him. “Are you ok? Any pain?” His unhurt hand flittered above Phil’s cheek, came down to hover above the startlingly white bandaged wound around his chest. Unwilling to touch and accidentally aggravate one of the multiple injuries littering Phil’s body.

“Lov’y to.” Phil slid back into drugged unconsciousness. The sound of Clint’s fury the only thing that had pulled him from it and having seen that Clint was there and ok, he let himself go again. It was too painful to be awake.

Fury and Clint left, taking the argument into the hallway to let the hurt man sleep. Tasha stayed behind, pulling up the single hard plastic chair beside Phil’s head and sat. Keep guard over her friend.

Clint and Fury stalked in icy deteunt down the corridor. Waiting to continue their argument until they wouldn’t disturb any of the patients on the floor.

Reaching the small foyer in front of the elevator bank, Clint couldn’t avoid it any longer.

“You’re one of the best operators I know. You have a duty.” Fury was a controlled storm, the effort he was putting into not exploding again would be obvious to anyone with eyes, to Clint it was a screaming neon sign.

He didn’t need to be fucking handled!

He also didn’t need to be guilt tripped into working with people that didn’t want him there. Aside from Jemma and Fury himself, not a single agent had been welcoming to him. Oh, most of them had been ambivalent, but there had been a handful who were openly hostile and not a single one who had made friendly overtures.

Clint’s mind settled into clear certainty. He had no idea what he would do when he left the agency, but knew he wouldn’t be staying. “No. I don’t. I did my duty. I served my country and they told me to fuck off.” He could explain, but didn’t feel the need to. He didn’t owe the other man anything. Clint strongly suspected that the only reason Fury had stepped in and helped him after Nepal was because he needed an outside perspective on the mole hunt, and not from any sense of justice or duty to Clint himself.

Clint walked away even as Fury was trying to think of something to say. Walking back the way they had come, he ducked into Phil’s room. At some point since they had left, Skye had come in and was curled up in Tasha’s lap, watching her father with tired eyes.

“Tasha, why don’t you take Skye home? I’ll stay with him.” Clint offered.

Tasha’s bright green eyes narrowed in suspicion. She hadn’t forgiven him for disappearing to DC and her doubt that he would be here when they came back was clear in her eyes.

“I promise.” The words were soft, just audible over the beeps and whirrs of the medical machinery monitoring Phil.

“Okay.” Her acceptance wasn’t any louder than his reassurance.

“No!” Skye tried to scramble from Tasha’s lap. She wasn’t going to leave her dad.

Tasha caught her around the waist and held her close. “Solnyshko, we will come back in the morning I promise. But you need to sleep.”

Exhausted, the little girl started sobbing into Tasha’s shoulder soaking the fabric of the woman’s jumper. Holding her close, Tasha stood and swept from the room. Murmuring reasurances in Skye’s ear the whole way.

Clint sat in the vacated chair. Settling himself as comfortable as possible for a long night of watching the medical monitors and the steady rise and fall of Phil’s chest. 

The only time he moved throughout the long night was to duck into the bathroom across the hall. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure that he believed Tasha when she said Phil wanted him there, but he did know he had promised her that he would stay. At least until morning.

Lost in thought and half-hypnotised by the slow rise and fall of Phil’s chest, the hours trickled by unnoticed. Clint had no skills beyond trick archery and kill people. Once again there was no clear path forward. It didn’t scare him as much this time. Unlike last time, he wasn’t seventeen any more. He knew more of the world. He knew there would be people standing with him. 

He didn’t need to figure it out tonight either.

A change in Phil’s heart rate jolted him back to reality. Focussed specifically on the monitor now, it went back to the steady mid-60s as it had been all night. About to write it off as a glitch in the machine or his own imagination, it happened again. Jumping up into the high 60s and then falling back down. A few minutes later it happened again but stayed there. This time a low groan of pain came from the man he was standing watch over. 

“Phil?” Clint was out of his chair and pressed as close as he could get to the bed at the first sound of distress. There still wasn’t anywhere he was able to rest his hands on Phil, but having them by his side or hovering over the other man felt weird, so he twisted his calloused fingers into the rough, over starched hospital bed sheets.

Phil groaned again. Clint was pretty sure it wasn’t in response to his question. Over the next hour as the sounds outside the hospital room indicated the start of the working day, Clint watched as Phil’s fingers twitched and his eyes flickered behind their lids. Keeping vigil while Phil swam back to consciousness.

Eventually his eyes blinked open. Unable to properly focus them, he still looked around the room, trying to figure out where he was. Spotting Clint he struggled to line up his last memories into something that made sense.

“Clint?” He asked, voice thick with sleep and drugs. “Wha’ happened?” He coughed, throat dry.

“Easy.” Clint poured a cup of water from the plastic jug sitting on the bedside table. “Here.” Carefully, he directed the straw into Phil’s mouth. Taking it away again after he had only had a few sips, just enough to wet his mouth and throat.

“What happened?” He asked again.

“You were hurt, but are going to be ok.” Clint spoke around the question. He wasn’t ready to admit that he was the reason Phil was in hospital, drugged to his eyeballs.

The clatter of feet in the corridor, and the door being thrown open prevented Phil from asking again.

“DADDY!” Skye threw herself across the room at the sight of her dad awake. “I was so worried! I got home and you weren’t there! SoI got Clint and he got his friend Jemma…”

Clint slipped away from the bed as she recounted what she knew of events to Phil. Passing Tasha in the door, he left before she or Phil could say anything. The eyes that followed him down the hall were full of judgement.

= + =

Walking straight through his apartment, Clint stripped as he walked. Dropping bandages and clothes in an uneven line between his front door and bathroom. The water as hot and hard as it would run, he stepped under the spray and stood there. Letting the pounding water and heat work their way into his tight muscles, loosening tension that had been building for a week. He stayed there until the water ran cold. Stepping out he stood, dripping on the bathmat, unsure what his next move was. His mind numb. A shiver ran through him, he hadn’t turned the heating on and the cold air chilled his wet skin. Wrapping a towel around his hips, he shuffled into the main room, flicked the heating on, and then dropped into bed. Determined to stay there for the foreseeable future.

A loud knocking, reminiscent of Skye’s appearance a few days ago, woke him. The length of the shadows through the window told him that it was mid afternoon. Rolling over, he considered seeing who was at the door but was distracted by spots of blood on the sheets where he had been laying. He hadn’t realised he had been hurt in the raid. Looking at the blood and wondering where it came from, it took him an embarrisingly long time to remember the cluster fuck in the Canaries. He had broken a couple of scabs in his sleep and because he’d never bothered to replace the bandage after his shower, the blood had been soaked up by his sheets instead.

Mystery solved he flopped back down. The sheets were stained now, there was no need to get up and replace the bandages. The reason for his awakening forgotten a renewed banging on his door had him out of bed and scrambling for a weapon.

“CLINT! OPEN YOUR DOOR!” Tasha shouted through the wood. Each word was accompanied by a hard knock.

Opening the door wasn’t something he was going to be doing any time soon.

Yanking the blankets up to his chin, he stuffed his head under a pillow and pretended the scary redhead wasn’t trying to break down his door.

“COWARD!” She hit the door with an open hand with enough force to rattle the heavy wood in the frame.

The knocking stopped though.

He wasn’t tired anymore, but also didn’t feel like getting out of bed. Spreading across the mattress, he allowed himself to starfish, using all of the space available to him. Moving the pillow under his head, he lay on his back and studied his ceiling. Counting marks in the paint. Watching the light from outside creep across the walls. Allowing his mind to float from memories of Carson’s to his time t in the Marines, but shying away from thinking about the last few months. Phil was so intertwined in the most recent period of his life that he couldn’t think about it without thinking about him which would lead Clint to memories of the last few days, which he just wasn’t ready to start dealing with. 

= + =

For days he floated around his apartment. For hours he stared at the ceiling above his bed until he knew every crack in the paint, then he migrated to the sofa and started again. The only interaction he had with the outside world was on the phone to the chinese delivery place down the block and their delivery boy when he dropped off food.

Tasha tried battering down his door two more times before giving up in disgust, she told him as much through the door that he refused to open.

He had stopped counting the days. If he thought about it, he knew he could work it out, but he didn’t so as far as he was concerned it could be wednesday or it could be sunday. He didn’t care.

A quieter knock than Tasha’s, interrupted his routine of staring at the ceiling blankly. “Clint? Tasha says you are here but if you don’t want to talk that’s fine. But I am worried about you. At least I need to check on your arm. Make sure it is healing well.” Jemma’s lilting accent floated into his space. If she had demanded he open the door, he would have ignored her. The barely concealed but genuine concern was impossible to ignore.

Blanket held around his shoulder, corners dragging on the ground, he shuffled across the room and wordlessly opened the door. Turning his back he shuffled back to his previous position on the couch, but sat instead of lay. He let her decide whether she wanted to come in, the door left open for her.

With a deep sigh, she stepped inside and closed the door behind herself. Her usual enthusiasm dampened, she crossed the room and lightly sat next to him. Waiting to see if he would start the conversation. Once it was glaringly obvious that he wouldn’t, and that he didn’t care one iota that she was there, she started pulling the blanket away from his injured arm.

She started at his shoulder, poking the skin along the long lines of stitches. “This is healing well. No infection. A few more days and I can take the stitches out for you but you will need to baby it for another week or so.”

Cool, he thought sarcastically. It wasn’t like he had any imminent plans to do anything that would stress the new scars. 

“Agent Fury told me that you are leaving SHIELD.” She continued after wrapping the blanket back around his shoulders, her hands curled tightly together in her lap. “Do you know what you are going to do instead?” She asked. This time happy to wait him out, she fell silent.

Shadows slowly crept across the carpet, clouds obscuring the late winter sun. 

The heater clicked on as the temperature started to drop in the face of the coming storm.

Loud footsteps echoed in the hallway beyond the apartment, Clint’s neighbor returning from work.

Silently, fat snowflakes began to fall outside, whiting out the view from the window.

If either of them had looked outside, they would have seen a taxi pulling up and Tasha and Skye helping a bandaged and wheelchair bound Phil back into the building opposite. But the return of the baker went unnoticed by the two SHIELD Agents.

“No.” Clint whispered.

Jemma unwound her hands and clasped them around his instead.

“I would like if you stayed.” She whispered, not wanting to break the uneasy quiet.

“I can’t.” For the first time since she had arrived, he met her eye. The sky blue of his eyes was made even brighter by the reddened skin around them from struggling to keep his tears at bay. “I can’t go back Jem. I was my fault.” His voice cracked at the end. Shoulders shaking with sobs, he broke down properly. Unable to talk to Barney about what had happened that night on his brother’s doorstep had been a valve releasing. This was about facing the mental wounds that he had been hiding from for days.

Easing one of her hands out of the tangle their fingers had become, she wrapped it around his shoulders and pulled him in close. She held him as he shook apart.

“It’s ok. Let it out. I’m here.” She murmured into his unwashed hair. Whispering nonsense.

The relief of release had him dropping into sleep. Still lent against her, she carefully pushed and pulled until he settled with his body along the sofa, and his head cushioned in her lap. Through the long night, she held his hand as he slept deeply for the first time since the bunker, undisturbed by dreams of arriving too late to save Phil, getting there just as he gurgled his last breath. Nightmares of Skye being taken as well or instead. She didn’t know it, but Jemma’s presence was trusted, allowing his mind to release it’s normal need to be half aware at all times.

Stirring a few hours after dawn, the smell of fresh coffee and frying bacon met Clint’s twitching nose. Blearily sitting up, he struggled to remember falling asleep the night before. The cheering good morning from behind him brought it all flooding back.

“I can’t stay at SHIELD Jemma.” He picked up the conversation without returning her greeting. He knew without the link of work, he would lose her as a friend, but he couldn’t risk more people getting hurt because of him.

“Why not?” She asked, turning away from the stove frying pan in hand. Her words without judgement and genuinely curious. She set about plating their breakfast and pouring him a mug of coffee as she waited for him to answer.

Clint waited to answer until he was clutching his coffee mug close, the warmth of the ceramic comforting. “I joined the Military to protect people. SHIELD let me continue doing that. But if staying gets people hurt, what’s the point?”

“Clint, you don’t have to leave though. Why not just take a different position?”

That got him to look at her, an expression of extreme scepticism plastered across his face. “Yes, because a ex-carnie, Marine washout is exactly why the accounting department is looking for.” He said sarcastically. Before muttering to himself, “God, maybe I should go into the private sector bodyguard for some trust fund baby like Stark.”

“No, not accounting. You would be bored in a week.” She agreed, although for different reasons than his. “Why not analytics?”


	15. Mar 2014, New York

It had been three weeks since Clint had last seen Phil or Skye after his less than dignified exit from the SHIELD Medical floor. After his three day mope, Jemma had chivvied him out of the apartment and back to SHIELD. Latching onto his arm, she had walked him into a room with Fury and a HR rep he hadn’t met. A fraught two hours later, she had finally let him out of the room with a new contract with SHIELD that moved him sideways into backend analysis of real time intelligence and planning. Basically, he was now one of the guys they called in when a plan went FUBAR without warning and they needed fresh eyes.

That had been a thursday. He returned to Washington and his family for the weekend. Needed to be surrounded by the comfort of home without the constant reminder of things still left undone in the form of Phil and Pekar across the road from his own place. The quiet domesticity of the trip had restored his internal balance, allowing him to start at SHIELD fresh Monday morning.

What followed was a revelation for the increasingly world weary archer. He was greeted on the analyst floor on Monday morning with a cup of coffee from an Agent Henries, one of his new colleagues. Clint was welcomed with a warm disinterest. They knew who he was and his history with both SHIELD and the Marines, but saw beyond the obvious that the field agents had never bothered to consider. The questionable report from Nepal, being the foremost of the issues.

There was no easing in period. Over his first week he was pulled into four different missions that were underway and gone off the rails, one of them spectacularly with a car chase through Prague that had resulted in a lot of property damage.There was also no 9 - 5 Monday to Friday on the analyst floor. If you were assigned to a mission that was still colouring outside the lines you were still at work.

It was exhausting, and frustrating in equal measure. But it was also fascinating and surprisingly, to Clint at least, well within his abilities. 

His first week had tripped over into his second and the start of his third without him noticing. On a Tuesday morning that held the promise of Spring in a warm, salt laden breeze, he stumbled home after 72 hours without sleep as he had talked a junior sniper through a hit and the cat and mouse chase that followed. His eyeballs were trying to climb out of his head, but he felt like he had achieved something meaningful without putting any of his people in danger.

Clambering out of the Taxi, he knew he would fall asleep on the subway if he took it, he heard his name called out from across the road. Without having a chance to turn and see who had called him, a solid weight impacted against his back. 

Twisting his upper body, he looked down at the little person impersonating a limpet. Skye’s dark brown hair and bright blue and red backpack was all he could see of her, her face hidden in his sweater.

“Skye, come on. We need to go.”

Looking up at the sound of Phil’s voice, Clint accidentally met the other man’s eye. The wounds that had been visible on his face were healed. Pink lines across one cheek stood out starkly against his normally tanned skin, new scars that hadn’t had time to fade yet. Clint flinched away from the reminder of his failure.

“Hi.” He almost whispered.

“Hello.” Phil’s voice was curt. It was a greeting you would give to someone you knew and had to be polite to but didn’t particularly like. “Let’s go Skye.”

Clint had never heard him sound that harsh. The speed at which Skye reacted suggested she hadn’t either, skipping two steps backwards to stand next to him, looking back and forth between then, confusion evident in her eyes.

Taking her hand, Phil walked off. Clint watched them go, unease swirling in his gut. He was hurt by Phil’s coldness but understood he had brought it on himself. The man had been kidnapped because of him after all. But it still didn’t sit right with him.

Decision made, Clint dragged himself upstairs and into the shower. Phil was taking Skye to school and would be back soon and he was intent on fixing it as much as he could when the baker returned.

Clint ordered his coffee from an equally chilly Linda and sat in the armchair that until recently had been his. The few regulars sitting in to enjoy their morning caffeine fix hardly met his eye, and the few that did lacked their normal greeting or smile. Clint felt the turn around sharply, just as his colleagues started to warm up to him, the people who had been so welcoming stepped back.

Unsure how long Phil would be, he had brought some paperwork with him. Laying it out on the coffee table he got to work. Losing himself in the numbers and sequence of events from the last mission he had helped with, the AAR was going to be fascinating reading if they didn’t redact the while fucking thing.

“What are you doing here?” Phil asked from above him. 

Clint jumped at the sudden voice. “Waiting for you.” He answered once he got his breath back.

“Why?”

“Can you sit? Please?” Clint was having to turn and crane his neck to look up at the other man and that was going to get uncomfortable quickly.

“Why should I Clint?” Phil’s arms were crossed awkwardly. Defensiveness in every line of his body.

That was fair enough, Clint supposed. He stood up and turned to face Phil instead.

“I just, um. Wanted to. I guess say sorry.” It was a struggle to keep looking the other man in the eye, but he knew he owed him that. Owed it to show how serious he was. 

“For what exactly? There are a few things you owe me an apology for.” Phil wasn’t giving an inch. If Clint was going to apologise he was going to do it because he understood what he had to be sorry for, not just because it was one of those things you do.

“For what?” Clint echoed, he thought it was pretty fucking obvious what for. “For getting you kidnapped and tortured.”

“But not for running away, twice and then hiding from me and Skye for weeks?” Phil’s voice was dangerously calm.

Wait, what? “Um. Sure? Wait, no.”

“Oh, you’re not sorry for that. Have a good day Clint.” Phil turned, but only got one step away from their little corner of the shop when Clint’s hand carefully closed around his elbow. 

“Phil, wait. Can we just talk.” Clint was resigned to him saying no, but tried anyway.

Phil pulled his arm away from Clint’s light grip but went around and sat in his chair. Wordlessly staring at Clint. If Clint wanted to talk, he could talk. 

Clint’s sharp eyes caught every quickly averted gaze of the regulars who had been watching the interaction avidly, as if they were their favourite day time soap. Clint sat back down, putting their audience from his mind.

“If I had been avoiding you I would be sorry, but I haven’t been.” Clint sighed, the fight going out of him. He just missed his friend.

“We haven’t seen you since you ran away. If that’s not avoiding us, I don’t know what is.” Phil’s voice finally had some emotion in it, deep sadness.

“I’ll give you the running away. My best friend was in hospital though.” Clint threw him a look at that, asking if he would argue that not being a reasonable reason for running. “I went to Barney’s. Then I moved to a new job and it’s been crazy. This is the first time I have been home in almost a week.” He explained. He was tired enough that he couldn’t avoid the self reflection that was telling him he would have been here earlier if he had been home even slightly more often.

“Still with.” He paused, recognising naming Clint’s work place in a public setting was probably breaking all sorts of laws that he wasn’t even aware of. Instead he left the question hanging.

“Yes.”

“Is it a good job?” Phil asked awkwardly, unsure what to say to that.

“Its fine.” Clint waved the topic away, that wasn’t why he was here. “I am sorry for running away.” He turned them back to the topic at hand.

“Okay.” Phil finally accepted the apology. But didn’t leave it there. “You don’t have to be sorry for what happened to me though.”

Why was he making this more difficult than it had to be? Clint silently asked himself with a huff.

“That’s on Foster.” Phil continued, seeing the argument in Clint’s face and cutting it off before it could be voiced. “If you feel the need to feel guilty about that too, I accept that apology. But it isn’t needed.”

Clint nodded his head in quiet acceptance of Phil’s acceptance knowing neither of them were going to shift their opinion. Clint steadfast in his belief he was responsible for the whole thing, and Phil in his that Clint wasn’t.

Both sat back, enjoying the return of the comfortable silence that had always been part of their friendship. The arrival of hot coffee for them, by way of Linda, indicated that their repaired relationship had been noted. The smile for Clint that accompanied it suggested their audience were glad for them.

“There was one question I had.” Phil was the first to break the silence.

Clint hummed to show his willingness to answer, within reason.

“Did you say you loved me when I was in the hospital?”

Clint felt his face burst into a bright red blush. “Maybe.” He mumbled into his chest, ducking his head to avoid Phil’s eye. The single word too low for the other man to hear.

A bright wide smile broke across Phil’s face and Clint knew Phil’s drugged return of the sentiment had been true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. This was a blurr of writing and throwing ideas at people to see if it worked. I hope you enjoyed the journey as much as I did.


End file.
